The Shrew War, Book IV: The Thunder and the Fire
by Highwing
Summary: The conflict between Badger Lord and Searat King reaches its climax.
1. Chapter 52

Chapter Fifty-Two

Extract from the diary of Winokur Otter, apprentice Recorder of Redwall Abbey:

_It is the midpoint of spring, and Redwall is preparing for another wedding!_

_I know it's been some while since I last made an entry in this journal of mine, but between the routine business of helping out Brother Geoff with his lesson presentations and his never-ending attempts to impose order on the Abbey archives - not to mention my regular drills with Skipper Monty, swims in the pond, and all the sundry tasks with which I'm asked to lend a paw - plus all the exciting, unique events that have been coming in such profusion this season, well, it seems I can never find the time to keep current on my diary. Bad waterdog!_

_But back to the wedding - just the latest thing to occupy our attention here at Redwall, but everybeast's main focus at the moment. When Colonel Clewiston and Melanie announced their betrothal a fortnight ago, it took us all quite by surprise, to say the least. I mean, Melanie is soon to be a grandmum - both Mizagelle and Givadon are with child, with both babes due around the first of summer - and as for the Colonel, well, he's not OLD old the way Broyall was, but he's hardly a leveret either! I guess when the springtime urges get into some creatures, it really gets into them! I do believe that both of Melanie's daughters nearly fainted when they heard this news; all the Long Patrol were in an uproar over this, but it was mostly a happy uproar, I am glad to report. At least, once the initial shock wore off, it was. It takes a lot to flabbergast those implacable hares, but this sure did the trick! Of course, Clewiston is their commander, and no hare of his would begrudge him for exercising his right to take a wife. And Melanie was the obvious choice, being the female Long Patrol closest to him in age. I don't know if they intend to try having children of their own - Melanie might be beyond her seasons for that - but the prospect raises some interesting possibilities. For one thing, Mizagelle and Givadon could end up with a half-brother or half-sister who's younger than their own sons or daughters!_

_While we all await for these new arrivals from the Long Patrols, we have another babe in our midst to lavish our affections upon. Captain Grayfoot's wife Judelka gave birth six days ago, to a male as hearty and vigorous as any otterbabe ever was! Abbot Arlyn swears he'll be walking by midsummer, and I wouldn't be surprised if that turns out to be so. For now, however, he is totally dependent upon the rest of us for his care and sustenance. And I do mean "us": I don't mean to be cruel, but Judelka is taking to motherhood like a fish takes to the sky. Aside from providing her milk for her son, she seems totally at a loss when it comes to being a mother. Abbess Vanessa even had to coach Judelka on how to hold the baby for nursing! I wonder sometimes whether that ferretwife isn't a little slow mentally, and I know I'm not the only one. She's even proven incapable of naming her own child! And when the Abbess went to Captain Grayfoot and told him that responsibility would have to fall on him, he simply shrugged and said he'd not given the matter any thought, since he never imagined he would have to involve himself in such a thing! With those two for parents, I can't help but wonder how that ferretchild will fare. To his credit, I have heard Grayfoot sitting discussing the matter with the hares and otters and some of the other Abbeydwellers, but if he started out on the task without a clue on how to proceed, he's now had so many name possibilities thrown at him that he doesn't know which way is up anymore! But for now the babe remains nameless, and Vanessa has made Grayfoot agree that if he hasn't settled upon a name by two days hence, she will make the choice for him. It's a shame, really - that precious ferretbabe is so cute that even some of the Long Patrol are going googoo-eyed over him. He deserves the best upbringing he can get._

_The good news is that he and Judelka will be dwelling at Redwall for some time yet, and that should benefit the little tyke a good deal. Grayfoot is only just getting ready to leave for the ruins of St. Ninian's, where Lord Urthblood had decreed that the ferret captain should establish his tavern and homestead. Foremole and some of his mole crew have graciously volunteered to accompany him for help with the construction - nobeast can lay a foundation like a mole, after all - along with a few of Montybank's otters, for extra muscle power. With that team, they should have that inn built in very good time indeed. Grayfoot was waiting to leave to begin that task until he made sure that Judelka gave birth without any complications. I may have sounded a bit uncharitable toward him here, but the truth is that he is a goodhearted soul who I'm sure does care for his wife and child more than his soldierly demeanor shows. He's just been an officer for so many seasons that now in his retirement he must learn an entirely new vocation: being a husband and father. I have seen him when he is with his son, seen the wondrous adoration in his eyes as he's cradled that babe in his uncertain arms ... and a little love can make up for a great many shortcomings in other areas._

_The only other thing keeping Captain Grayfoot here now is the upcoming wedding of Melanie and the Colonel. Nobeast who's ever had a taste of a Redwall celebration would miss another if they could help it. Even if that ferret were inclined to depart prior to our imminent festivities, he would find himself travelling alone, since the moles and otters wouldn't dream of missing them. Given the spread we had for the last Nameday, I don't think Grayfoot will get his snout out of joint over a couple of days' delay. He and his volunteer crew will probably leave the day after the celebration ... assuming they're not all too stuffed to move! I just hope, for everybeast's sake, that this joyous day is not marred by any tragic or unfortunate incidents of the sort that shadowed this season's Nameday ..._

_We all still miss Sister Aurelia greatly, but none moreso than Abbess Vanessa, who personally trained Aurelia to take her place as Infirmary Keeper after Arlyn named her Abbess. She is often to be seen standing over the grave of her fallen apprentice in her quieter moments, shedding silent tears of grief for the lost one who shared her calling. She has yet to appoint a replacement for Aurelia, taking over many of the healing tasks herself. To give credit where it is due, the vixen Mona has done quite an admirable job of filling in for our Abbey healer while we are without one, although some of the little ones still seem a bit skittish around her. But her medicinal talents cannot be denied. Abbot Arlyn and some of the others have to keep reminding Vanessa that Mona is only a temporary solution, and will be leaving us as soon as Foxguard is ready. I almost think our Abbess would like to return to her old occupation full-time, leaving her other duties to Arlyn, but of course our dear Abbot is too advanced in his seasons to manage all the responsibilities of running Redwall, especially with everything that's going on in these hectic days. Vanessa will just have to take a new trainee under her wing. I'm sure she recognizes the need for this, even if she is reluctant to act on it just yet. Some things just have to come in their own time ..._

_We were all gladdened by the news Deltus the squirrel brought us about Cyril and Broggen. It's unfortunate that our two absent friends had to run into such vermin as those slavers, but it sounds as if they emerged from that confrontation with the upper paw, and by a good measure. It's also quite a coincidence that the Guosim happened by just as Broggen was putting paid to the very foxes who'd kidnapped Pirkko last summer. (Not to slight Cyril, but there's little doubt that it was our exiled stoat who put those slavers in their place. I mean, Broggen's a trained, experienced soldierbeast, and Cyril's ... well, just Cyril.) It's good to know those villains aren't running around Mossflower anymore, and just as good to know that Cyril and Broggen were still both all right when last Deltus left them. Broggen did a terrible thing, and while there are those like the Colonel and Lady Mina who will never forgive him for what happened with Sister Aurelia, most Redwallers have come to accept that it was not entirely his fault and still think of that stoat as a friend and a goodbeast. One with problems, but a goodbeast nonetheless. It was very big of Cyril to volunteer to go with Broggen. We all hope the two of them will be all right, wherever fate takes them. One thing is fairly certain: with the slaying of those foxes and the rescue of those stolen youngbeasts, Broggen has proven his worth as a decent creature to all but the most stubborn-minded among us, and there is little doubt in my mind that the Abbess would welcome Broggen back to Redwall anytime he cares to return. The choice is his, of course, and he may well carry too much shame to ever want to live here again, but I should be rather surprised if we don't see his beret-topped face around here some season or other._

_It's always fun to see the reactions of visitors who've never been to Redwall before. Our reputation for good food and warm hospitality is known far and wide, it is true, but some beasts just need to see it for themselves! I do believe Deltus and his two tribesmates could have had their jaws picked up off the floor numerous times during their brief stay with us. I still don't know which impressed them more: our October ale or the moles' deeper'n'ever pie. Or maybe it was Friar Hugh's special honey plum crumble. Most certainly they had never slept in beds as soft and warm as the ones they enjoyed that night. We were all very surprised when they insisted on being off the very next day, but then it is clear that these squirrels of Clan Barrenoak are grim and independent creatures, not given to soft living, so I can understand their eagerness to be back amongst their kinsfolk. Before they left, Alexander and Lady Mina hammered out an informal agreement with Deltus to have his tribe serve as Redwall's eyes and ears down in that region, since the Forest Patrol seldom ventures that far south on that side of the road. Alex had not been aware of the Barrenoak presence in Mossflower and was most interested to learn of them. And thus another ally literally comes out of the woods!_

_The two young orphans Deltus brought with him are settling in nicely. The badger lad, Metellus, has grown quite attached to Maura - hardly surprising, given what he saw those foxes do to his own mother. Maura is now the only badger left in his life, and Metellus is never far from her side, even as all the other youngsters gleefully flee from her authority. He is quieter and more reserved than any badger - or any other creature his age, for that matter - I ever thought I'd meet. Perhaps he still suffers from the trauma of what he witnessed, or it could just be that a life of solitude in the deep woods has left him more introspective than most. For her own part, Maura has spent so many seasons raising others' children here at the Abbey, I think that finally having one of her own kind among her charges has affected her deeply. Metellus is like the true son she never had, and she has not stopped doting on him since his arrival at Redwall. If he seems a tad tied to her apronstrings, she apparently doesn't mind at all._

_And as for that squirrel rascal Budsock, he's taken Pirkko's place as Droge's new best friend, and seems intent on surpassing that rambunctious 'hogchild as the terror of Redwall! It only took a couple of days for him to overcome his initial quiet and awkwardness at being in a strange place among so many new creatures, and by my rudder has he overcome it! He gives poor Maura (and the rest of us!) every bit as much grief as Droge ever did, and when the two of them get together, it's scarcely safe for any Redwaller to take a step or sit down anywhere without risk of running into one of their practical jokes. Oddly enough, young Metellus seems to hold a more restraining influence over Budsock than even Maura. I suspect a special bond was formed between them when they were chained together in that slave line. Droge may be Budsock's favored playmate, but that squirrel and badger share something far deeper. I know Deltus was talking to Alex and the Abbess about having Budsock come live with Clan Barrenoak when he gets a little older, but I believe he will elect to stay here. Budsock admires the Barrenoak squirrels for helping to deliver him out of slavery and here to Redwall, but I cannot see him leaving Metellus and all his new friends ... not to mention that he has developed quite a fondness for Friar Hugh's flavorful products!_

_I think it also helped Metellus and Budsock that we had other recent arrivals here who were themselves still getting settled into Abbey life. None of the slaves that Browder conducted here have become brothers or sisters of the Redwall order yet, and maybe they never will, but they are of course welcome to live here for the rest of their seasons whether they do or not. It was partly at their suggestion that the Abbess refrained from holding a special feast for our two newest arrivals. The former slaves from the coast were all adults and enjoyed our Nameday immensely (at least up until the tragedy of Sister Aurelia), but they were unanimous in their opinion that Metellus and Budsock would benefit most from a calm time of transition while they grew accustomed to their new home. Those freed slaves of the searats had all suffered personal losses of their own, but in the case of our young squirrel and badger, their emotional wounds were fresh, and they were in greater need of comfort and sanctuary than festivity and celebration. Besides, as has often been pointed out these days, an ordinary meal at Redwall must seem like a feast to most creatures from the wilder parts of Mossflower. And with Clewiston and Melanie's wedding coming up in two days, those two youngsters will soon see for themselves what a real Redwall celebration is!_

_Yes, all the newcomers are finding their niches here at the Abbey. Granholm has taken up archery lessons with Alex, Mina and Elmwood, with an eye toward becoming an eventual member of the Mossflower Patrol. After all that he endured, that squirrel is determined to dedicate the rest of his life to defending goodbeasts against evil creatures. Wharff and Kurdyla have been embraced by Montybank and his otters, although Kurdyla still sticks close by Browder whenever he can. With Mizagelle in a family way and Browder as the father, it seems highly unlikely that any of the Long Patrols would try anything against that player hare, but Kurdyla is steadfast about protecting Browder against all enemies, whether they exist or not. They say that big otter has mostly recovered his wits since his experience in the caves of the Flitch-Aye-Aye, but since we didn't know Kurdyla before he came to Redwall we have no basis for comparison. He still seems a bit slow to me - more on the ball than Judelka, to be sure, but not the swiftest otter in the stream by any means - but by the fur is he strong! We've seen him lift nearly twice his own weight, and pull up a small dead tree, roots and all, as if it were no more that a mere sapling! I once heard Maura remark that he's actually a badger in an otter's body, and I almost believe it. For brute strength I'd wager Kurdyla could stand toe-to-toe with Maura, and maybe even against Urthblood himself._

_Of the other slaves, Fallace and her fellow hedgehogs seem quite content lending Balla a paw down in the cellars, while the mice are more than happy to help out in the orchard, gardens, kitchens, shops or wherever else they are needed. Lekkas is a very take-charge kind of mouse, more at home with hares, otters and squirrels than the more peaceable members of our community. The Abbess may appoint him as one of the Abbey defenders eventually, if only in a coordinator capacity. Lekkas lacks any weapons training, but he has a good head on his shoulders; I hazard that I would willingly take orders from him in a tight situation. The mousemaid Clovis is as kind and gentle a soul as a beast could be, and offered many soothing words to Metellus and Budsock when they first arrived with Deltus. I think she is one of the main reasons those two have adjusted to Abbey life so well. But beneath her soft surface lies the hard core of a born survivor, and she is not shy about showing it when provoked. Several times she has lit into the hares when they've made disparaging comments about Browder in her presence. (All the former slaves remain devoted to that hare, which weighed heavily in Abbess Vanessa's decision to accept Browder into our community, even after that business at Salamandastron last summer.) Clovis also becomes somewhat distressed when anybeast refers to her as a "mousemaid" within her hearing, and has made it very well known that she would prefer we don't. I can't imagine why, but the Abbess assures me there must be a very good reason for it._

_Good grief, here there's a major wedding coming up the day after next, and I've just spent an entire afternoon scribbling away in this silly diary of mine! Well, nobeast seems to need me just at the moment, and it is nice and warm up here on the east walltop, basking in the last rays of the lowering sun. So, I'll just scratch out a few more thoughts before the dinner bells sound. Best favor I can do everybeast is to stay out of their way, eh?_

_Highwing has chosen three young Sparra to join Brother Geoff's classes. It will be interesting, having birds in class alongside all our furred pupils. But if Geoff and I have been able to handle Droge these past few seasons - most of the time, anyway! - we should be able to cope with anything!_

_We still don't have a stairway up to Warbeak Loft, and won't even resume discussing such a thing until Foremole returns from helping Grayfoot with his tavern, and that might not be until well into summer. It would be a great convenience, everybeast is agreed, but also a tremendous undertaking. Perhaps someday we'll get the confounded thing built. Might be easier now that we have a little extra muscle power these days. Why, we could ferry Kurdyla across to the quarry and just have him hurl the stone we need from there to the Abbey!_

_Speaking of ferries, Tolar and Roxroy did indeed have their otter helpers leave our raft on our side of the River Moss when they left us after Nameday. None of us have taken advantage of this; things have just been far too busy here. The Sparra have kept an eye on things for us, and they report that the quarry now lies all but abandoned. All the action (and all the cut and fitted stone) has moved to the construction site of Foxguard itself. All the creatures who'd been at the quarry are now there, including the roughly two hundred ferry shrews and their heavily-laden barges which are now all but clogging the river. The latest word we had was that the foundation and basement are completely excavated and lined, and construction is well underway on the above-ground portion of the fortress. Just the building, that is, not the wall; when Highwing dropped in on them, Andrus explained that the outer defensive wall will be built last, since it will have only one entrance and would be too hard to work around. Well, with so many creatures there, I don't think they have to worry about being attacked anytime soon! But soon the whole thing will be built, and Mona will be off to live there, and then I suppose some of us shall have to pay a visit to our new neighbors. I'd like to be among that first delegation from Redwall to visit Foxguard, especially if Roxroy can't manage another visit between now and then. I truly feel I struck up a genuine friendship with that fox, and I look forward to seeing him again when I may._

_What will the future bring? Who can say? Lady Mina is concerned by the latest reports of conflict and powerful new searat weapons in use along the western coast, and insists we must be ready if Tratton presses war upon us. The Long Patrols, meanwhile, have not given up on their insistence that Urthblood is the true danger to the lands, which naturally elicits nothing but scoffs of derision from Mina, along with stolid assurances to the contrary from Mona and reminders from some of our newest residents that it was Urthblood's forces which freed them from slavery and inflicted heavy losses upon the searats. The only thing both sides seem to agree on is that war is definitely coming - we're just not sure from which quarter. All I can say, simple otter apprentice Recorder that I am, is that Mossflower seems quite peaceful to me on this day. Gazing out over the battlements at the surrounding countryside, calm and lazy under the fading glow of the westering spring sun, I find it hard to envision that any storm of war is about to break upon our walls, or that any strife is soon to consume these plains and woodlands and shatter the blissful peace I see all about me. In fact, it is difficult to imagine that war may be afoot anywhere in the world on such a day as this ..._


	2. Chapter 53

Chapter Fifty-Three

Machus was red again.

The orange sun had deepened to crimson as it sank toward the sea, casting a ruddy glow over the western coastlands. The glass fox erected on the south slopes of Salamandastron now stood suffused with scarlet - a deeper red than the swordfox's coat had been in life, but still truer to his memory than the crystal statue's usual white purity. The effect was majestic. The memorial sculpture shone on the mountainside like a warrior of light ... and like a warning.

But the Lord of this natural stronghold, whose own armor shone as red as the sun-touched likeness of his deceased Sword, required no such alarm beacon. His inner eye, forever trained upon what had been and what was to come and the now of elsewhere, had on this occasion seen the approaching danger even as the patrolling gulls winged their way toward the mountain bearing news of the enemy's movements. And the preparations had already begun.

A mixed team of Mattoon's weasels and Saybrook's otters emerged from the south entrance of the fortress, bearing between them the large wooden plank upon which they would bear the glass statue down the slopes and around through Salamandastron's main seaward-facing gate. Both captains followed along after the main party, as did Trelayne, anxious to make sure no harm befell his masterwork.

"Huh!" groaned one of the weasels carrying the transport board. "Don't see why Lord Urthblood's makin' us take this down an' drag it in. A lotta extra work fer us grunts, an' what for?"

"Ain't it obvious, matey?" replied the otter across from him. "War's a-comin'. No other explanation for it."

"War?" The weasel glanced seaward into the ember-red sunset, but saw only an even ocean horizon unbroken by mast or sail. "What, you think mebbe them gullbirds been bringin' him reports that he ain't been sharin' with th' rest of us?"

"I think mebbe Lord Urthblood doesn't need them feathered vermin t' tell him what's on the way. Hey, watch where yore goin'!" he added as the distracted weasel stumbled over a small rock, momentarily losing his grip on the moving board. "I don't wanna get splinters in me flipper on account o' your clumsiness!"

"Yagh," the weasel complained, "I already got splinters in me paw, so what're you grousin' about?"

When the procession reached the statue of Machus, they laid the board on the uneven ground upslope of the sculpture and then, using ropes tied around the memorial for counter-pull, painstakingly lowered the crystal work from its low pedestal onto the carrying plank. Trelayne hovered and fussed on the outskirts of the operation like a worried Mayfly, helpless to do anything more than look on as the fate of his greatest creation lay in the paws of others. Relief spread wide across the glassmaker marten's face as his faux fox came fully to rest at last upon its crude sled.

Wrapped in protective linen sheets to guard against chips and scratches during the uncertain passage to come, the statue was lashed securely onto the board with the lowering ropes. Thus secured, the sculpture was lifted and borne down the mountainside to the sandy coastal plain below, and thence around to the main entrance. Mattoon, Saybrook and Trelayne himself all lent a paw to the tremendously heavy burden, crowding the edges of the carrying plank with beasts.

Matowick met them inside the entry hall with a wheeled dolly, onto which the statue was deposited. "Okay, we got it from here, lads," the Gawtrybe captain said. "It's up to the dining hall with this now. Let's get a move-on!"

As he and half a dozen of his fellow squirrels rolled away the sculpture - with Trelayne following on their heels, of course - the complaint-prone weasel said, "I don't see why they hafta lug that thing all th' way up to th' main mess. We brought it in this way, so why not just leave th' blasted thing here instead o' wrasslin' it up all them twists 'n' turns?"

"Um ... 'cos it's Lord Urthblood's orders?" another weasel supposed.

"That's right," Mattoon confirmed, striding over to join their conversation. "But if y' need a better reason than that, then use that sludge y' got between yer lugs an' you should be able t' figger it out fer yerself. We wouldn't be shiftin' that statue at all unless His Lordship was afeared of it gettin' damaged. An' what's the only thing likely to damage it?"

"Er ... fightin', sir?"

"Right. Fightin'. An' if there's swarms o' searats assaultin' us on all sides, there's a chance they might be able t' breach these main gates ... in which case this hall we're standin' in now's gonna become a battle zone more ferocious than anything you saw last summer when we was fightin' Urthfist an' his hares."

The weasel looked confused. "But, if we're worried 'bout searats gettin' inta Salamandastron, why're we fussin' over a chunk o' glass? Ain't that kinda ... well, unimportant by comparison?"

Mattoon shrugged. "Like Rotch 'ere says - Lord Urthblood's orders."

Saybrook came up alongside the weasel captain. "When Urthfist an' his Long Patrols was holdin' this mountain 'gainst both us an' Tratton, they blocked up this entrance solid - durn near cemented them gates shut. Wonder if Lord Urthblood's plannin' on doin' th' same? That'd keep out those pesky seavermin, that's fer shore."

"Well," said the weasel Rotch, "long as it's our squirrel comrades who're stuck with th' job o' gettin' that pain-in-th'-tail statchoo up th' stairs an' around all them twists 'n' turns, they can stick it up on th' roof fer all I care!"

"Don't reckon th' roof'll be any safer," Saybrook speculated. "Matter o' fact, I wager Lord Urthblood'll want that mirrory contraption he's got up there brought in as well. Shouldn't be surprised if he calls on us t' shift that by day's end too."

"Yeah, jus' what is that confounded thing anyways?" Rotch asked.

"He ain't seen fit t' tell even us captains, an' I ain't seen fit t' press th' matter," Saybrook told the weasel. "Figger it's gotta have some importance, elsewise he'd not've put so much work into it. Now, I'm gonna go take a peek at how they're gettin' our glass fox friend settled in up there."

"Guess I'll come with ya." Mattoon fell into step behind the otter captain. "At ease, everybeast!" he called over his shoulder to the lingering otters and weasels of the moving crew.

Wooden plank inclines had been placed over all the stairs leading up to the dining hall to accommodate the Gawtrybe's wheeled cart. Lifting these aside as they went, Saybrook and Mattoon arrived in the dining hall just in time to see the quartz statue of Machus being emplaced in its new home. Two of the smaller side tables had been pushed into a corner to make room for a temporary, improvised pedestal of bevelled stone slabs, upon which the oversized sculpture was uprighted. The multifaceted surface, alternately smooth and textured, glittered in the torchlight in a far different fashion than it had out on the mountain slopes under the full light of the sun. The swordfox's visage and pose remained splendid and proud, but the subdued illumination of the flickering torchfires lent a somber cast to the audacious swordsbeast.

Urthblood and Trelayne stood side by side, overseeing the final positioning of the statue. Captains Abellon and Tillamook were present along with Matowick, in case the Badger Lord decided to hold an impromptu rededication ceremony. However, since Urthblood was satisfied with the placement, he merely stood back and gave a single, private nod.

The solemn silence was broken not by one of the officers, but a lookout rat who came hurrying down from the plateau above. "M' Lord!" he gasped out. "Seagull scout reports a searat fleet less than a day away!"

"Yes, I know," the badger responded casually, as if receiving a routine weather report. Striding past his dumbstruck commanders on his way to the roof of Salamandastron, he said, "It is time to see if my alliance with King Grullon will deliver as much as I had hoped."

00000000000

All that night, the defenders of the mountain fortress were kept on pins and needles. The Badger Lord dispatched his owl captain Saugus to keep a noctural eye on the enemy fleet, but otherwise made no official announcements, called no muster of his troops, convened no council of his commanders. Yet this did not prevent news of the approaching searat vessels from filtering down through the ranks. By daybreak nearly every soldierbeast within Salamandastron knew that war was almost surely upon them.

There were, however, also creatures presently within the stronghold who were not fighters of Urthblood's forces. The badger warrior had as yet issued no decree regarding them, but Captain Matowick felt this matter ought to be addressed before Hellsgates opened upon them, unleashing the full fury of unrestrained armed conflict.

The first ghostly pale intimations of dawn suffused the outer passages of Salamandastron with a twilight grayness. Matowick picked his way along these dim corridors and stairs on his way up to the plateau, passing many of his fellow soldiers on the way and occasionally glancing out the windows to assess the new morning. The young day had yet to reveal whether it would be clear or cloudy, full of bright sunshine or threatening rainstorms.

A faint, high-pitched ringing still lingered in Matowick's ears from his previous encounter with the newest searat weapons, and the squirrel captain was beginning to worry that he might suffer from this condition for the rest of his life. Not a night had passed since his return to Salamandastron that he hadn't lain his head upon his pillow to sleep only to be serenaded by this everpresent, tinny buzz in his skull. It was maddening. Matowick felt foolish, fretting over such a minor nuisance when comrades had lost limbs and lives in that battle, especially since his hearing seemed otherwise unaffected. Then there was also the distinct possibility that the rest of his life might not be as long as he'd like to think it would be; even among Lord Urthblood's captains, warriors often did not get to enjoy old age.

At least Sergeant Custis had finally made it back to the mountain with the injured who'd been left behind at the searat lumber camp. It had taken half a season before the wounded had recovered enough to make that journey, but in the end Matowick's gambit had paid off; with the_ Sharktail_ drawn away from the burning mill site, his comrades hidden there had survived without further loss. Of course, now they'd returned just in time for the next major battle, it appeared.

At an intersection Matowick met up with Lieutenant Perricone as she came down another corridor. The junior officer nowadays walked with only the slightest trace of a limp, having almost completely recovered from her leg fracture. She might carry that barely-detectable hitch in her step for the rest of her days. Matowick wondered which would be worse to live with, his tinnitus or her gimp. Of course, it made her no less gallant in his eyes ... nor any less beautiful.

They halted facing each other across a pawstep's distance. For a heartbeat they exchanged only affectionate smiles. Then Perricone leaned forward and acknowledged her superior officer in a way she never would have envisioned a season ago: with a loving peck on the cheek. "Morning. Sir."

"Morning, Perri. You're looking hale and fresh this day. Get a good night's rest?"

"Are you kidding? I didn't sleep a wink last night ... and I'm betting you didn't either, with all the preparations Lord Urthblood must have had you doing."

Matowick shook his head as Perricone fell into step beside him on his way up to the plateau. "That's the odd thing. He hasn't called any strategy sessions or issued any special instructions to any of his captains. He's up to something with the seagulls, but I hope he's not counting on those birds as our sole line of defense. There's no guarantee that they'd be able to destroy every one of Tratton's attack ships before at least some of them could put their fighters ashore ... and then it'll be up to us to keep the searat hordes from overwhelming us."

"But, aren't those ships supposed to get here today?"

"That's the report I heard. Maybe Lord Urthblood's waiting for them to make their first move, so that he'll know how to most effectively deploy us - in a defensive posture or sending us out of the mountain to engage them before they can put us under siege." Matowick shrugged. "Still, he should have at least told us _something_ by now. I just can't figure it."

"Well, at least now we know why he refused to marry us. He must have foreseen that this was coming. Can't very well have newlyweds mooning over each other in the heat of battle. And war's a lousy way to spend a honeymoon."

"I don't see what difference it makes," Matowick grumbled as they started up the last passage before reaching the plateau. "My love for you is the same whether we're wed or not."

"Then for now our love will have to be enough." Perricone planted another kiss below his ear just as they were stepping out into the crisp seasalted air. "And if we both come out of this alive, we can talk more about marriage then."

"If we come out of this alive and intact, I will make you my wife, Perri. This I swear."

"Intact, huh?" she teased. "Then I'd better not go getting anymore of my limbs broken, otherwise you'll have grounds to weasel out of your proposal ... oh, um, hello there, Captain Mattoon, sir!"

"Mornin', Lieutenant. Cap'n." The weasel commander stood awaiting them up on the plateau at the top of the stairs, having been drawn to the entrance by their voices echoing in the stone corridor below. Perricone threw him a quick salute; even though she was a Gawtrybe squirrel, Mattoon was one of the supreme commanders of the mountain and technically still her superior, and she had to afford him the same soldierly formality she gave to Matowick ... or Saybrook, or Abellon, or Tillamook. Well, Matowick was exempt from that list, since their delayed betrothal made their relationship rather unique. But, if any of the other captains gave her an order, she would have to follow it as if it had come from Matowick himself. This was one of the stipulations to which the normally-independent Gawtrybe had had to agree before Urthblood would accept them as defenders of Salamandastron.

"How're we lookin' up there, Mattoon?" Matowick inquired.

"Coast's clear, so far," the weasel reported. "If those searats're makin' fer our doorstep, they're takin' their sweet time about it. All the action's happenin' down on th' eastern slopes just now, away from th' sea."

The two squirrels could see Urthblood standing at the western rim of the extinct crater, still as a statue against the gray morning seascape, his crimson armor the color of mud in this predawn gloaming. For the moment they disregarded their badger master, following Mattoon's prompt to peer over the east side of the caldera bowl.

Seagulls crowded the eastern flanks of Salamandastron - well over a hundred, by Matowick and Perricone's estimate. Down at the tunnel entrance that served that side of the mountain, several soldiers of various species labored with scores of the liquid-filled glass globes that had proven so effective against the searats in the most recent battle.

"Well, at least we know Lord Urthblood's winged warriors are girding for battle," said Perricone. "But why all the way over there, on the landward side of the mountain?"

"The way a bird can cover distance, I don't suppose it matters much which part of Salamandastron they take off from. What worries me is, what if Tratton sends his armies against us in his new steel ships? Steel doesn't burn."

Perricone nodded over her shoulder toward Urthblood. "Well, let's go see if they're in sight yet."

Urthblood was using his long glass, scanning the ocean horizon from south to north and back again for the first glimpse of his enemy. As the two Gawtrybe crossed the plateau to join him, they had to step around the huge mirror assembly which was tilted to shine its light eastward, over the line of mountains that separated Mossflower country from the coastlands. The badger had refused to reveal the device's purpose to any of his inquiring captains, saying only that it was not a weapon, nor did it have anything to do with the searats. The highly-polished surface - so large and unwieldy that it, like Machus's statue, had had to be taken out through the main gates and borne up the side of the mountain to the plateau - sat braced in an elaborate steel cradle, which allowed it to swivel in place. Why, with the threat of Tratton weighing upon them all ever since capturing Salamandastron from Urthfist, Urthblood had devoted so much in the way of time and resources to the creation of this apparatus remained a mystery to everybeast but the badger himself.

"What news, My Lord?" Matowick hailed as he and Perricone approached the Badger Lord.

"No ships on the horizon, Captain. Captain Saugus should return any time. Now that daylight has arrived, I will send out more gulls to relieve him. Grullon's folk do not like to fly at night."

"Um ... any chance they weren't making for Salamandastron at all, sir?" Perricone asked hopefully. "That maybe they were headed for some other destination along the coast? Because the reports last night indicated they were almost upon us."

Urthblood lowered his gaze from his telescope, balanced upon the iron cap of his severed right paw, to throw her a searching glance. "I was not aware that I had circulated any of the reports I received last night, Lieutenant."

"Um ... er ... "

"News like that travels fast through any army, sir," Matowick quickly put in on Perricone's behalf. "You know that."

"Apparently so. But in wartime, lips should never be too loose. In answer to your question, Lieutenant, I am certain that Salamandastron is that fleet's target, and I am sure Saugus will confirm that it did not veer off in the night for parts unknown. I can only speculate as to the reason for their delay, but I assure you it is only a temporary one at most."

"Then, when do you think we can expect them?" Matowick asked.

"Not before midday, nor later than sundown ... at a guess, Captain."

"Good. That gives me time to look after something that needs my attention ... "

00000000000

All of the surviving slaves from Tratton's timber mill who hadn't gone with Browder to Redwall dwelt still at Salamandastron. After their ordeal during the battle with the _Sharktail_, many were in need of healing and all were in need of rest and recuperation. Numbering fewer than a score, they represented no great drain on the resources of the mountain stronghold, and as there had been no immediate threat of war at the time of their arrival, Urthblood had allowed them to abide within his fortress for as long as they wished. They had no families or homes to which they could return, and the cold seacoast weather of late winter and early spring discouraged unnecessary travel. And so the days of their temporary stay had turned into the better part of a season as the injured healed and the rest grew comfortable with the daily routines of Salamandastron, lending a paw wherever they could to help earn their keep.

But, helpful as they were at times, they were still not trained soldierbeasts, and might well prove worse than useless in an all-out searat assault on the mountain. The various commanders would have all they could do to look after themselves and their troops while they fought this battle. The last thing they needed was to have to safeguard civilian creatures who got themselves caught in the middle of a battle between two professional armies.

It also didn't help that the former slaves had taken the infirmary as their dorm. The uninjured among them had gotten into the habit of sleeping in vacant beds down there so they could be close to their wounded friends. This arrangement became more permanent when it was realized that the sickbay was the only unassigned resting chamber with enough beds and space to accommodate all the ex-slaves, who had become used to sleeping side by side chained in the rowing galley of the _Wavehauler_ or locked inside their quarters at the lumber mill. This concession to their comfort and peace of mind was all well and good as long as the infirmary remained largely unneeded, but now this sick bay might soon be filling up with war casualties, with every bed occupied and overflow patients spilling out onto floor mats and choking the corridor beyond. These slaves would have to be relocated - and preferably not just to another part of Salamandastron.

The former slaves were just stirring from their nightly slumbers when Matowick strode into the infirmary. Bleary blinking eyes, widely yawning mouths and luxuriously stretching paws greeted the Gawtrybe captain as he paced past the rows of beds. The otter Tourki had become the unofficial leader of their group, and Matowick sought him out now.

He caught Tourki in the middle of a yawn wide enough to swallow a melon. "Oh, mornin', Cap'n! Sorry 'bout that, but a good night's sleep deserves a proper wake up, eh?" The otter bounded up out of bed, flexing his legs and rudder in his customary morning routine. "What time is it? Still feels early t' me ... "

"Not quite sunrise. At least it wasn't when I was up on the plateau just now, although the sun could be touching Mossflower Woods as we speak." Matowick clasped his paws behind his back, his attitude formal. "I'm afraid the day we've been expecting has arrived."

Tourki's mood instantly sombered. "Searats a-comin'?"

Matowick nodded. "They'll be here by day's end."

"How many?"

"We're still trying to determine that, but it's looking like a full assault force."

Several of the others had overheard, and a small crowd began to gather about Tourki, concern and alarm shadowing their faces. "Guess this means you'll be wantin' this room back," the otter said. "Do you know if they'll be usin' that thunder-boomin' stuff they attacked us with up the coast last winter?"

"Who can say? If they have more of such weapons, it would be logical to assume they'll use 'em ... tho' I don't know how much good they'll do against Salamandastron."

"Oh." Tourki sat himself down on the side of his rumpled bed, paws on his knees. "Well, don't go takin' this th' wrong way, Cap'n, but we don't wanna be no part o' that."

"I understand."

"We came down along th' coast with ye after y' freed us 'cos we thought mebbe we'd get another crack at fightin' them scurvy seadogs, but weren't none o' us prepared fer what they clobbered us with. If we knew this battle that's comin' now was gonna be honest paw-t'-paw combat, I'd say give each one o' us a blade or spear an' ye'd see us slay searats with th' best of 'em! We ain't cowards, else we wouldn't be here now. But ... if they're gonna use that murderous boomin' stuff ... "

"Nobeast here will think any less of you for not making this your fight too," Matowick assured them. "You've all done your sufferance under the searats in their forestry compound, and in their rowing galleys. We freed you so that you could seek out some joy in life for the remaining seasons you have left to you. Please don't take this the wrong way, but I was going to request that you leave Salamandastron this day anyway. Things might get bad enough around here for us experienced soldiers. Trust me, you will not want to be here."

"Sounds like ye've made up our minds fer us," Tourki said.

"But, where will we go?" a burly female hedgehog worried.

"Redwall would be my recommendation," said Matowick. "That's where all your friends went with Browder, and I'm sure they'd be happy to see you again. There's no question of the Abbeybeasts not welcoming you into their home, for as long as you'd like."

"Won't th' searats run us down if'n they spot us fleein' from th' mountain?" Tourki asked.

"Oh, not to worry, we'll be keepin' those seascum too busy to worry about chasing after a pawful of runaway slaves," Matowick grinned with confidence. "Besides, if you know the right way to go, we should be able to get you well away from here without them even noticing you ... and they can't very well go chasing after what they don't know about, now can they?"

00000000000

Just below the horizon line from view of Salamandastron, the midmorning sunshine glinted and danced off the calmly undulating ocean surface which rippled like a mirrored sheet laid over the earth. That perfect expanse of sea and sky was broken by a quartet of tall-masted ships ... and one much smaller vessel, almost invisible against the deep sea.

Tratton stood upon the deck of the _Wedge_, watching the four retreating dinghies carrying his captains back to their respective dreadnoughts. They'd just held their final strategy council out here upon the waves, the captains gathered about the ironclad and bobbing upon the gentle swells as their Emperor addressed them in their rowboats. The Sea King had to make sure that they and their crews knew exactly what to do, since there would not likely be any communication between them and Tratton once the dreadnoughts were in position and hostilities commenced.

Tanzillo, captain of the _Wedge_, stood beside his lord atop the armored seacraft. "Will we be off right away, Yer Majesty?"

Tratton glanced skyward. "No hurry. It's still some way until noontide, and I don't want to arrive off the coast of Salamandastron before dusk. We still don't know how that bloody badger managed to destroy two of my dreadnoughts, but I'm not taking any chances. Urthblood is sure to have catapults of his own, as well as otter patrols swimming out to try and hole us. We have the defensive submersibles to handle the otters, and their catapults will avail them little if they cannot see us clearly, or accurately gauge how wide their shots are falling. The night will favor us in this engagement, so we will use the night to our advantage."

"Aye, M' Lord. I unnerstand. But th' _Wedge_ 'ere's got no sails, bein' driven by screws 'n' oars alone. We can't go as fast as the others, so I thought ye might wanna get a head start ... "

"You heard my orders to the others, Tanzillo. Once we get underway from here, it will be at half-sail. They'd see us coming with plenty of time to raise the alarm even if we go in at full speed, so I'm not rushing into anything. We will all lift anchor together and head toward the coast at the appointed hour. And if the _Wedge_ ends up lagging behind the dreadnoughts, we'll just sneak up on the scene while the big ships occupy the woodlanders' attention. We won't be getting between the shore and the attack ships anyway, and they should hopefully shield us from view of anybeast in the mountain. I'm only here to observe the battle ... and to be on paw to claim Salamandastron as my own, if we should prove victorious."

"If, M' Lord?" Tanzillo asked. "Is there any doubt we'll win, Sire?"

"With Urthblood, there is always doubt. That is why we shall remain on the outskirts of the engagement, and only go ashore when we are absolutely certain it is safe to do so."

Now it was captain Tanzillo's turn to gaze skyward. "Sure are an awful lot o' gulls about t'day."

"Yes, I'd noticed that myself."

"Ought we try 'n' shoot a few of 'em while we're waitin' t' get unnerway, M' Lord? Th' crews'd 'preciate a little fresh-roasted seabird in their bellies."

"I'm sure they would ... and I've no doubt that some of those lunkheads will try to shoot at them. I just hope they don't waste too many of my arrows before they realize those gulls are wheeling and circling too high up. It appears our reputation precedes us, and they know to stay out of archery range."

"Pity. T'ain't nothin' quite so savory as roasted bird flesh," Tanzillo lamented.

"Yes, a pity," Tratton said with a slightly mocking tone as he turned to head belowdecks. "But we have more important things to think about at the moment than food, and those feathered screechbags aren't good for anything else."

"Aye, M' Lord," Tanzillo was forced to agree.

And high overhead, the seagulls continued to circle and cry ... and watch.


	3. Chapter 54

Chapter Fifty-Four

Tourki and the other former slaves were treated to an immense farewell breakfast, followed by a light and early lunch. The time in between was used to outfit the departing civilian beasts with food and bedding that would see them to Redwall. The unblinking sun stood just past its noontide zenith as the party gathered at the eastern foot of the mountain, below where Urthblood's workers toiled with their myriad of glass globe weapons.

Captain Matowick came out to see them off, along with another Gawtrybe squirrel he introduced to the slaves as Daum.

"The searat fleet is finally visible above the horizon from the plateau," Matowick told them, "and there can be no mistaking that they are sailing straight toward Salamandastron, so this evacuation looks to be just in time. Our birds tell us there are four dreadnoughts in this fleet, along with at least one of Tratton's smaller steel vessels. The ship we destroyed up at the lumber yard, and the second one that chased us down the coast, were both dreadnoughts. They're Tratton's biggest attack ships, each one able to carry more fighters than we have in all of Salamandastron. Some or all of them also appear to be equipped with catapults, and presumably this means they're also carrying the new explosive weapon the searats have. Tratton wouldn't be sending such a force against us unless he meant business. If he unleashes everything he has against us, this will be a close contest."

"Almost makes me think we oughtta stay after all," Tourki said.

"I know how you feel, friend, but believe me, you're doing the right thing. I almost feel like going with you, knowing what may be to come, but I'm a captain in Lord Urthblood's forces, and my sworn duty lies here."

"Well, I did say 'almost,'" the otter amended with a pensive grin.

Matowick returned the smile. "Those ships are still far away, and won't be close enough to try any troop landings before sunset at the earliest. What you want to do is head due east, up through the higher dunes and into the foothills. There's a pass over the mountains that can cut many days off your journey to Redwall. Follow Daum here, he's been over it and knows the way. The pass is treacherous, with several deadly chasms, but I was able to lead a troop column of more than a hundred beasts over it without losing a single fighter, so you should be fine as long as you take it slow and travel single file. You won't want to attempt that crossing at night, so you can camp in the foothills when you reach them, then start up the mountain trail at first light. That way you should be able to crest the highest passes and start down the other side in a single day."

"An' if the searats come after us while we're waitin' fer dawn?" Tourki asked.

"I honestly don't think there's much danger of that," replied Matowick. "If you go straight east, the bulk of Salamandastron will hide you from their view. They won't even know about you unless they land trackers who pick up your trail, which won't be easy to follow after dark. But, trust me, any hordebeasts who try to land will have to get past us first, and we intend to keep them too busy to worry about a few runaway slaves. Besides, sending any of their forces after you would draw fighters from their main strength here, and believe me, they'll need every rat if they want a war with us!"

"And don't forget, sir," Daum put in, "I know a thing or two about wiping out tracks. It'll be especially easy on this sandy coastal plain. They'll not pick up our trail, Captain, don't you worry!"

"That's the spirit, Daum!" Matowick pounded the younger squirrel on the shoulder. "Knew I picked the right Gawtrybe for this assignment. Just follow this lad's lead, Tourki, and you should do fine."

The otter looked to Daum. "You be comin' with us all th' way to Redwall?"

"I ... don't know," Daum answered. "Depends on what's going on around Salamandastron tonight and tomorrow. I'll get all of you over the mountains and down to the Western Plains, but after that ... my place is here, just like the Captain's. I'll probably turn right around and head back over the high pass. You'll be safely away from the battle zone and able to find the Abbey on your own, and I have to go where I'm needed most."

"Whatever you feel you have to do, Daum, I'll leave it to your judgment," Matowick encouraged. "Take them all the way to Redwall if you can, but come back if you feel you must. Just try to stay safe, and I'll see you again when I see you. Good journeying to you all, and give my regards to the Abbess of Redwall when you see her ... and to that nuisance of a hare Browder too!"

As he picked his way back up the eastern slopes to re-enter the mountain fortress, a glinting from above caught Matowick's eye. Holding his paw to his brow and straining to look upward, he spied a crew of creatures wrestling with the giant mirror to haul it over the plateau rim and down the south flanks of Salamandastron.

"Guess Lord Urthblood doesn't want to leave any of his toys lying around outside where they might get broken," the Gawtrybe commander mused to himself.

00000000000

When he got up to the plateau, Matowick found out how right he was.

"Ah, Captain," Urthblood greeted the squirrel commander, "I was just about to send for you. Have the slaves gotten off all right?"

"Fine, sir. Daum's going to erase their tracks so that the searats can't follow them. The last thing we'd need would be to see hostages staked out on the sand below us, displayed as ransom for our surrender."

Urthblood gave a slow nod. "That is indeed a tactic Tratton might try. The best I could do would be to attempt a rescue, and hope that not too many of my fighters would lose their lives in the process."

"Hopefully, such a situation will be avoided. Those slaves have been through enough already. So, what was it you wanted, My Lord?"

The badger escorted Matowick around the west and south sides of the crater rim, pointing down at a number of fortified terraces. "I want all of those bolt-launcher carriages taken off the mountainside and brought down to the west entrance hall."

Matowick's eyes widened in surprise. "But, all of those launchers are perfectly positioned to cut down large numbers of any horde that tries to storm our main entrances! Removing them would seriously deplete our defenses if there's fighting on the slopes."

"You have enough Gawtrybe archers to adequately cover every tunnel opening and window in the mountain. Grullon's gulls will take care of any searats who make it as far as the mountainside. Those launchers are potent weapons, and our supply of them is limited. I would not see them destroyed or, worse yet, captured so that they might be turned against us."

"You really think that's a danger, sir?"

"I would not issue such orders if I did not deem that to be the case, Captain."

"Yes, Lord. I'll have them transferred to the entry hall at once. What about the catapults?"

"They are too heavy and deeply entrenched to move on such short notice. Besides, there is a chance that those ships may move into catapult range, especially if they think to try their new weapon against us. Our higher ground will give us the advantage in such an exchange. There are many ways this situation could unfold, Captain. We shall just have to wait and see what transpires, and stand ready to meet every challenge that confronts us."

00000000000

By midafternoon, every captain at Salamandastron stood by Urthblood's side up on the plateau, along with many of the stronghold's other defenders. All the bolt launchers had been withdrawn from the slopes, redeployed to the galleries overlooking the entrance hall where they sat ready to cut down scores of any searats who might be unlucky enough to breach the main west gates. The three large catapults on the west and south faces had all been aimed seaward to lob their awaiting payloads at Tratton's dreadnoughts should they sail within range. Ten thousand arrows and a thousand more slingstones had been distributed among every window slit and unblocked entryway so that the defenders would not run out of ammunition. And down on the east flanks of Salamandaston, the squadron of attack gulls - led by their newly-appointed captain Scarbatta - waited while Trelayne and his helpers toiled with the glass globes they might soon be dropping over mast, deck, sail and unprotected searat heads. All was as ready as it could be.

And now the mountain fortress held its collective breath, every eye turned toward the approaching warships. But Tratton seemed intent upon defying their expectations.

"I don't get it," remarked Captain Saybrook, taking a turn looking through Urthblood's long glass. "They've got half their sails furled! They ain't comin' at us near as fast as they could! What's that all about?"

"It appears they are in no hurry to get here. They must know that they would be visible from far offshore," Urthblood said, guessing this part of the rat king's strategy, "and so they see no need for utmost speed."

"But, that only gives us more time to prepare!" Matowick declared. "It makes no sense!"

"More time, yes," the Badger Lord countered, "but to prepare for what? Tratton clearly means to keep us guessing ... and my guess would be that he plans a nighttime assault. This would be in keeping with his slow approach now, since it will not matter to him whether it takes until dusk for his fleet to reach Salamandastron. The question is, will it be a traditional troop assault, or a bombardment with his new weapon - or both?"

"Don't you know?" the mouse captain Abellon ventured hesitantly. "I mean, can't you, you know ... _see_?"

"The events upon us now are clouded from my prophetic sight. There is no way to know how they will unfold. But we must take nothing for granted."

"Then perhaps we should attack them first, before they get any closer," Matowick suggested. "Send out the gulls to fire up those ships now, and be done with it."

"And if Tratton has come to parley?" Urthblood demanded of the Gawtrybe captain. "Would you make us the aggressor, striking first without provocation and destroying any slim hope there might be for a peaceful resolution to this?"

The jaw of everybeast around the badger warrior dropped in stupefied amazement. "Parley?" Matowick echoed dully.

"An' them bein' searats makin' straight fer us is all the provocation anybeast could need," Saybrook added. "Is there really any doubt what those seascabs have in mind 'ere?"

"As I have said, we can assume nothing," Urthblood rumbled.

"Why would they come in such force, if not to wage war?" asked Abellon.

"No rational leader would seek to negotiate from anything but a position of strength, if they have a choice," said Urthblood. "If Tratton showed up alone in a dinghy, would I be expected to take him seriously?" His unaided gaze went out to the four dreadnoughts, their unmistakable sails of red, black and green growing incrementally closer. "Make no mistake, Tratton is out there - probably in that steel ship that follows the attack vessels. Of this I AM certain."

"Even if Tratton does come to us under a flag of truce," Matowick argued, "we wouldn't be able to trust anything he says, so what would be the point?"

"The point, Captain, is that I have destroyed his main lumber camp and two of his largest warships. He cannot let that go unanswered unless he wants to be assassinated by his own commanders. On the other paw, he has seen that we have the capability to destroy his most formidable warcraft, and he may wish to avoid further losses if he can find a way to do so without losing face among his fellow searats. If Tratton indicates a willingness to talk, I will meet with him. On my own terms, naturally."

"And what - aside from Salamandastron itself - do we have to offer him that could possibly satisfy his requirements?" Abellon asked sourly.

"My word of honor not to destroy him utterly. I spent some time at sea with Whiteclaw before he became King Tratton, and he is well aware that waging war on me will be no easy feat - that he may very well lose everything. If he sees another way out of this, he may be eager to seize it."

"Then again," said Saybrook, "if 'ee thinks he can grab Salamandastron fer 'is own, that'd pretty much end th' war right there, whether he defeats you pers'nally or not, M' Lord."

"That will not happen," Urthblood announced with utmost certitude.

"Well, I know that, an' you know that - " the otter jerked his flipper thumb out toward the pirate ships, " - but mebbe that bunch out there's gonna hafta test that theory fer themselves 'fore they take it as truth, eh?"

00000000000

Evening found the four dreadnoughts anchored side by side just offshore from Salamandastron, their prows aimed threateningly at the mountain.

"Now there's a sight I've seen before," Saybrook muttered.

"Yah," added Mattoon from alongside him, "an' t'was one I hoped never t' see again. Guess it'd be too much t' hope they'll go slinkin' off without a fight like they did last time, huh?"

"Uncertainty stayed Tratton's paw when he last brought such a force to Salamandastron," Urthblood said, standing with his captains upon the plateau. "He did not know whether he faced one Badger Lord or two, or what our strength of fighters was. You can be sure his spies have told him much in the seasons since, and he has a much better idea now of what he faces ... or so he imagines. We may be stronger now than we were after last summer's battle, but so is Tratton ... and this time he cannot afford to depart without taking some definite action toward us. Whether that action will be war or something else remains to be seen."

"Reckon they're in catapult range, sir?" Abellon inquired of Urthblood.

"No, Captain. Tratton now employs catapults as part of his own arsenal, and you can be sure he has a healthy respect for what they can do."

"Guess that means we're not in his range either," Matowick said, trying to inject a shred of optimism into their mountaintop speculation.

Urthblood gestured out over the plateau rim with his left paw, which still held his telescope. "Those ships cannot bring their catapults to bear with their bows pointed toward us as they are now. But you will notice that, even though they currently lie at anchor, they remain at half-sail. This suggests that they may plan on repositioning themselves in the very near future."

"Least th' sun ain't shinin' right in our eyes anymore," Saybrook commented. "Fer awhile there I thought they might try a troop landin' with th' settin' sun at their backs ... "

Urthblood raised his head. Even though the sun had dropped completely below the distant curve of the ocean horizon, setting aglow the lower parts of the sky there with a ripe peach sheen, the long spring twilight was still silvery bright and provided plenty of visibility.

"As I have suspected all along, they are likely waiting until full dark to make their move."

"For all the good it'll do 'em," Matowick scowled, scanning the sky in all directions. "Gonna be a full moon tonight, an' there's no sign of storm or clouds rolling in to obscure it. Be almost as bright when the moon's up as it is now."

"This too I suspect Tratton has figured into his strategy," Urthblood said. "A full moon means the highest tides of the season, and the opportunity for him to move his ships in closer to Salamandastron than he could at any other time. Whether he plans a massive troop landing or a bombardment, this will avail him best in either case. The tide is still running out, and will reach low ebb any time now. Once the tide turns and begins to flood back in toward its full-moon high, then I think we will see Tratton show his intentions."

"Not too late t' use yer gulls, sir," Mattoon strongly hinted.

"There will be plenty of time to resort to them once Tratton tips his paw. I will not strike the first blow here ... but if Tratton starts anything, rest assured that we shall be the ones to finish it."

"An honorable stance, My Lord," said Matowick, "except that we're dealing with creatures here who have no honor. What if they unleash everything they have against us?"

"All our entrances and windows are well defended. And the solid rock of this fastness will easily withstand Tratton's new weapon."

"I'm not so sure of that, Lord. I've seen that stuff in action, and its power is not to be dismissed lightly."

"Aye, Matty's right," Saybrook spoke up in support of the Gawtrybe commander. "Not t' say it could bring Salamandastron down 'round our ears, but it could cause us no small piece o' trouble."

"Which is why I have had our more fragile articles removed from the slope and brought inside," Urthblood answered. "If there is to be a battle, it will not be like any that has ever been fought before on these shores. Tratton has his weapons ... and I have mine."

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It did not take long at all for Tratton to make his intentions clear.

As the bright gray evening dimmed toward true night, the four searat dreadnoughts pulled up anchor and, one by one, slowly crept closer to Salamandastron upon the advancing tide, turning about as they did until they were lined up bow-to-stern in a row with their port sides facing their massive target. By the time they took up their final positions opposite the mountain citadel, the last faint vestiges of the departed day had drained from the star-pricked night sky, but the moon had yet to show itself above the mountains to the east. The coastlands lay enshrouded in a darkness as deep as the blackest moonless night.

"Tratton has timed this well," Urthblood observed with his usual dispassionate smoothness. "He knew there would be a brief window between nightfall and moonrise during which he could move his ships closer under cover of darkness. Under these conditions, we cannot see those dreadnoughts clearly enough to accurately target them with our catapults, or to even tell whether they might be readying their landing boats."

"You ... don't sound too concerned by this, My Lord," Abellon said from among the group of captains who stood at the crater rim with their badger master.

"Undue excitement will gain us no advantage, Captain Abellon."

"P'raps not, sir," said Saybrook, "but this ain't no limp-wristed pups' tussel we're lookin' at neither. There's gotta be well over a thousand searat soldiers on those boats out there, an' if they all come at us at once, this could turn out to be a tougher spot than th' one with yore brother ... an' none of us needs remindin' o' how _that_ turned out."

A sudden geyser of sparkling, shimmering green blossomed noiselessly into being at the seaward base of the mountain below them. More than one of the onlooking Northlanders gasped aloud; this was nothing any of them had seen before.

"What the claw was that?" Mattoon murmured. "Poison, y' think? Or sumpthin' like yer Flitchaye gas, Lord?"

Urthblood shook his head against the starry backdrop. "Phosphorescent range markers. Since they waited until after dark to position themselves, they would logically have no way to see whether their salvos were on target until after they had expended quite a bit of their munitions. This saves them from wasting any of their actual ammunition in rangefinding and targeting. Most ingenious."

"Um ... so aside from admiring their ingenuity, what should we be doing?" Matowick ventured. Another soft burst of green came from the coastal plain slightly to the north and seaward of the mountain.

"This could still be an intimidation tactic," Urthblood said, "a way to demonstrate that they can hit us. But chances now favor a full-scale bombardment. They will want to commence with it before the moon is up and we have a chance to answer with our own catapults. Assume there are at least two and as many as four catapults on each dreadnought, as my seagull intelligence indicates. That means there will be between eight and sixteen of those weapons hurling the explosive casks at us. Thus, we have a brief window of our own while they refine their targeting."

The badger turned to Saybrook as two more silent green explosions flowered below, one on the south flanks of the mountain and the other near the tideline upon the beach. "I want every otter in the water before we come fully under bombardment, or as soon thereafter as possible."

"You want us t' swim out an' try t' hole them ships, M' Lord?"

"No, Captain, your mission will be patrol only. Once Tratton's attack begins, it will be unsafe for anybeast to remain on the slopes or up here on the plateau. It may be his aim to drive us all into the mountain so that he can land his fighters unchallenged. You must be our eyes and ears along the shoreline. If you see landing boats coming ashore, get back to Salamandastron if you can, to give the alarm. If we are besieged, I would like to have at least some warning before the searats show up at our entrances and windows."

Saybrook threw a salute to Urthblood, a gesture barely visible in just the starlight. "Right away, sir! We won't let you down!"

"Be careful, Captain. I will hope to see you again when this is over."

A trio of new phosphorescent blooms decorated the mountainside as the otter captain rounded up his fellows who were there on the plateau and led them down the stairs into the heart of the fortress.

"Matowick. Mattoon."

"Yes, My Lord?" the weasel and squirrel answered as one.

"I want our catapults staffed, if possible, even after the bombardment begins, so that we may return fire. But this will be extraordinarily dangerous. The catapults are stationary, and it is a certainty that Tratton's captains will target them at the first opportunity, especially if we fight back. Therefore, for this assignment I will accept only volunteers from among those of your troops who are trained in the use of the catapults. Make sure they realize the risks, and do not force anybeast outside who is not willing to be there. I would rather have an enthusiastic pair of fighting paws inside the mountain than a reluctant pair outside."

"We understand, Lord," Matowick nodded. "Volunteers only."

The two commanders followed Saybrook's example, disappearing down into the mountain to carry out Urthblood's bidding. Captains Abellon and Tillamook remained, along with some of the general Northland soldiery, watching in fascination as more of the targeting powder smashed and sprayed against the seaward half of Salamandastron, coating the rocks with a ghostly green glow wherever they burst and the glowdust settled.

"Looks like they're gettin' better," the hedgehog captain remarked after awhile. "Haven't seen one hit th' sand for quite a bit now."

Another targeting bundle impacted just below the crater rim, so close to the onlookers that some of the luminous powder plumed up over the low rock wall to spray Abellon's tunic, fur and whiskers. The mouse stood blinking as he tried to pat the stuff out of his coat and uniform. "I sure HOPE this ain't poisonous!" he muttered.

"Hey, ya look like a ghost there, Abby!" Tillamook quipped.

"Not the luckiest thing to say to a warrior right before a battle, Till," Abellon shot back. "You tryin' to jinx me or something?"

"I suggest we all evacuate this plateau," Urthblood announced to everybeast around him. "It will very soon be unwise to be up here."


	4. Chapter 55

Chapter Fifty-Five

Saybrook and his otters exited Salamandastron by the east tunnels, then took a wide path around the south base of the mountain on their way to meet the rising tide. They wanted to give a respectful berth to the zone where the phosphorescent markers were falling; even though Tratton was using these only for targeting purposes, taking one in the head would likely prove just as fatal as if it were an actual weapon.

As they rounded the lower limb of the natural fortress and beheld the dark sea before them, the moonless evening wrapped the ocean vista in near-complete blackness. Saybrook could not see whether any of the large searat landing boats even now stroked their way shoreward, or indeed whether they might not have already put ashore. But the delayed appearance of the moon worked to the otters' advantage as well, helping to cloak their presence from any watching eyes out on the dreadnoughts. Nobeast challenged them as they reached the water's edge and fanned out along the tideline.

Before sliding into the sea to commence their watery patrols, they took a few moments to simply stand and take in the spectacle unfolding behind them. By this time, every one of the rangefinding bundles was finding some part of the mountain's rocky exterior, none falling short or wide of their mark. Saybrook had little fear of his squad being noticed against such a backdrop; their pawful of tiny figures, less than silhouettes in the prelunar night, would be utterly lost against the dark immensity of Salamandastron and the unique display playing out upon its rocky crags.

As ghostly and surreal as this shimmering green salvo had appeared from the plateau, down here it took the breath and chilled the heart at the same time. Normally on such nights as this, the vast bulk of Salamandastron would rear above them like a massive black shadow against the twinkling stars, blank and featureless. Now, however, those silent luminous explosions blossomed all up and down the mountain slopes, bursting forth and then fading away each in its turn. But the glow did not fade entirely. The area where each marker struck remained dusted with the dim essence of the targeting powder. It cast no actual illumination - which was the main reason the otters did not fear discovery by its non-light - but rather painted the mountain with a sort of green shading which stood out from the deeper shadows of the unaffected areas. Crags, outcrops, ledges, terraces, boulders and hollows - all were cast into relief by the contrasts between the coated and uncoated surfaces. Even one of the catapult emplacements stood outlined clearly enough that it must surely be visible to anyrat with a long glass out on the dreadnoughts. Salamandastron rose from the coastal plain almost like some impossible behemoth half-emerged from some other plane of existence, a slumbering giant whose part-green, part-black aspect gave it the appearance of straddling the boundary between this world and the next. It was both there and not there, a mammoth phantasm designed to torture any sane eye.

Suddenly a very different kind of smoky sparkle arced high overhead and down toward the mountain. It was a sight familiar to every otter present, and one they'd hoped never to see again.

"Cover yore ears! Cover yore ears!"

Scarcely had Saybrook barked out that warning when the explosion lit up the seaward face of Salamandastron and tore apart the night's quiet with a thunderous roar.

The real attack had finally begun.

"Into th' water, mateys! Quick an' sharpish, shift those rudders!"

A second bone-rattling explosion pounded their eardrums as they turned and waded into the rolling surf. These fiery-yellow bursts lit up the night, allowing Saybrook to clearly see the expanse of wavetops between the beach and the searat fleet that lay at anchor for this assault. The otter captain breathed a sigh of relief upon seeing no rat-laden landing boats on their way toward the fortress. On the other paw, his squad must have been clearly visible to Tratton's forces in those first two flashes of this engagement. Right now the water would be the safest place for them - after all the effort the searat gunners had put into lining up their shots on the mountain itself, Saybrook very much doubted they would bother to retarget any of their catapults for the sake of a few otters dispersed throughout the surf who could be literally anywhere beneath the waves at any given moment. He planned on keeping his team widely scattered to make it clearly impractical for the searats to use their new weapon on them.

Saybrook and his companions' egos may have deflated somewhat to learn that their enemy would not have considered such a thing in any case, even after the otters had been revealed by the flashes of the opening salvo. Their target was Salamandastron ... and they had sailed to their goal with holds full of stormpowder to spare.

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From their small camp in the foothills where they'd stopped to spend the night, Daum and the former slaves sat watching the curious display around Salamandastron. The mild night and concern over attracting the searats' attention had decided them against lighting any kind of campfire. No distracting glare washed out the darkness around them, affording them a clear view of the searats' targeting exercises. At this distance, the luminous green dust billows had created a faint emerald penumbra around the outlines of the mountain, so faint that at first they thought their eyes were playing tricks on them. With the mass of the fortress standing between them and the ocean, they could see only the landward face of Salamandastron, which was not being subjected to the phosphorescent barrage. But from either side of the stronghold, and eventually from the plateau itself, the faint glow persisted, and soon there could be no doubt that something was amiss.

"Whaddya s'pose that is?" the otter Tourki wondered. "Fire, p'raps?"

Daum shook his head, his bushy tail twitching in alarm. "Not like any smoke I've ever seen. It's so dim ... an' such a strange color. Must be something new the searats are using."

"You don't reckon it's anything Lord Urthblood's usin', do ye?" Tourki asked the Gawtrybe squirrel.

"Not anything he's ever showed us." Daum shrugged. "Oh well. Whatever it is, I guess it doesn't concern us. Salamandastron's behind us now, and we'll be headed away from it come morning."

Moments later came the first bright flare, silhouetting the mountain in clear relief against the dark sea and sky. Although they all knew to expect it, the sound of the blast that rolled over them after a heartbeat's pause was still a shock. Even this high up in the foothills overlooking the coastal plains, the muted explosion struck like a boom of thunder from a violent summer storm.

Daum was not the only beast of their company who was up on its footpaws at the first blast ... but he was the only one who found himself taking hesitant, halting steps toward the besieged mountain as the second and third explosions followed. It was an almost automatic response, an urge to rush back to aid his comrades now under fire.

A firm restraining paw halted the young squirrel, closing around his elbow like a vise. "Hey, where d' ye think yore goin', matey?"

Daum glanced over his shoulder at Tourki. "Those are my comrades down there. I belong with them."

"So what're you gonna do? Run back there an' get yoreself blasted t' smithereens? That's all you'll accomplish if y' go rushin' back inta the middle o' that!"

"I could go in through the east entrance!" Daum shouted back over the din of additional explosions. "It doesn't look like Tratton's able to hit the landward side of the mountain!"

"Lissen, friend. We spent all afternoon gettin' t' where we are now. Even if y' go runnin' back that way fast as yore legs'll carry you, it'll be midnight afore you get there ... an' ye'll leave a nice clear set o' pawprints leadin' them rats right t' us. All that work you did erasin' our tracks today would be fer naught."

"I ... I should be there," Daum insisted through clenched teeth.

"To do what? Take a look down there. Salamandastron's either gonna stand or fall on its own, an' yore not bein' there ain't gonna make any diff'rence one way or the other. Now, yore orders was t' show us over these mountains to the other side, an' we can't do that ourselves since you know th' way an' we don't. Yore master bade us t' leave Salamandastron fer th' very reason that them searats might resort t' usin' that thunder stuff again, an' now that they have, I fer one am glad I ain't down in th' thick o' that hellish bruhaha. If you abandon us, ye'll be derelict o' yore duty."

Daum's shoulders slumped in defeat. "You're right, of course. It's just galling, to see Lord Urthblood's home attacked like this an' not lifting a paw t' stop it."

"You wanna give them searats a right ol' black eye? Then get us t' Redwall, where we'll be beyond their scurvy clutches ferever. We used t' be their slaves - their property! - so havin' us safely away from 'em an' livin' in freedom would be a slap in their face. But, if we was t' get killed ... or, worse yet, recaptured ... "

"That won't happen." Daum forced himself to turn away from Salamandastron and follow Tourki back to rejoin the others of their small company. "I'll make sure it doesn't. I'll get you to Redwall - you have my word on that. But first we have to make it through the night. The moon will soon be up, giving us a clear view of the coastlands below us. I'm going to post a watch rotation until we're ready to move on at dawn, so that we can see if anybeast tries to sneak up on us."

"Good idea, matey." Tourki clapped Daum on the shoulder. "I'll take first watch if y' want. Although - " the otter threw a glance down toward the blast-ravaged mountain, " - looks like they've got all their attention on that fortress, too much t' spare any fer us."

"If you think that's true now, you just wait," Daum told the otter. "Lord Urthblood's not about to just sit there an' take abuse like this. He'll strike back soon ... an' when he does, you can be sure Tratton won't be a happy rat!"

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Even if Salamandastron itself did not crack under the unrelenting searat bombardment, Matowick felt that he surely would.

The percussive rumblings and vibrations surrounded him; there was no escape from them anywhere within the mountain. In the outer chambers and corridors of the stronghold's north, west and south faces, the roar of the explosions came in through every window and opening, almost as loud as they would have been to a creature standing right out on the slopes amid the rock-tearing, bone-jarring blasts. Urthblood had been quick to order those sections of the fortress evacuated except for a few skeleton crews of lookout guards who fervently hoped a wall collapse wouldn't turn them into literal skeletons.

But things were little better deeper inside the mountain. From its bowl-shaped plateau all the way down to its rocky base just above the coastal sands, Salamandastron was being pummeled on three sides as never before in its history. Even in the lower heart of the natural citadel, where the unwavering assault could be heard as no more than vague rumblings, the constant buzz-like trembling of the rock underpaw played on the subconscious and set nerves on edge. Mattoon's troops, as well as Abellon's mice and Tillamook's 'hogs, had never endured anything like it. The same was true for the Gawtrybe who had not accompanied Matowick and Saybrook's assault force that winter and taken part in the battle with the _Sharktail_. For those who had previously experienced the Searat King's new weapon firstpaw, however, it was a most unwelcome trip down memory lane.

Matowick sat upon a wide window ledge overlooking a precipitous drop in the mountain's east face. Although the squirrel had no way of knowing it, this was the very same chamber in which Colonel Clewiston and his twenty defender hares had been imprisoned when Urthblood captured Salamandastron the summer before, and this the very window from which those Long Patrol had escaped by lowering themselves to freedom on an improvised bedsheet rope. The large room still served as a dormitory, but for now the Gawtrybe commander had it all to himself. Nobeast here would be sleeping this night, no matter how tired or drowsy they became.

The full moon now hung high in the night sky - not that the pale illumination would do the Northland defenders any good at this point, since it would be suicide to set foot out on the bombarded slopes, lethal to venture out onto the unprotected plateau, and hazardous even to occupy any of the seaward-facing passages and chambers. They might spot a searat landing force trying to come ashore under the cover of this blinding, deafening tumult ... or they might not. Tratton very much called all the shots in this engagement at the moment. The responsibility fell to Saybrook's otters to serve as Urthblood's first line of defense against such an eventuality - assuming Tratton hadn't also come up with some new weapon to take care of them as well.

The silvery moonglow bathed Matowick as he gazed down over the eastern slopes. Here on the landward side of Salamandastron the explosions could still be clearly heard as distinct claps of muffled thunder echoing back at him from the distant mountains and reverberating across the coastlands. This bombardment must be audible for miles; he wondered if they might even be able to hear it at Redwall.

He'd thought he was prepared to face this again, but he'd been wrong. The memories of being trapped among the explosions on the open beach came flooding back to him with tonight's first blast, memories made all the worse by the passage of time and the enhancement of imagination. In his mind Matowick could see the skyward bursts of sand tearing his friends and comrades limb from limb, hear the stomach-punching booms that had temporarily robbed him of his hearing, and feel the rush of hot, brimstone-laden air that knocked him right off his feet. He didn't even need to close his eyes to glimpse that earlier carnage, so vividly did it persist in his brain.

And when the moment for valor and steadfast resolve had come this night, all thoughts of duty and leadership and responsibility fled from Matowick's head, leaving the overwhelming, undeniable need to get as far away from those blasts as he could.

Of course, Matowick could not abandon his Lord or his troops altogether, no matter how great his urge to flee the mountain and run off into the night. Instead he took the first available opportunity to slip away from Urthblood and the others and seek out a spot that was the least traumatizing to his shattered sensibilities. It was louder here at the open window than down in the depths of the fortress, but he'd actually been more unnerved in those deep shelters, knowing that the vast, immovable fortress of Salamandastron surrounded him on all sides and yet still being able to faintly hear and feel the explosions regardless. Here on the windowsill, he could at least breathe in the fresh air and feel the night breezes against his face, secure in the knowledge that he'd put as much of the mountain between himself and the bombardment as he could. And, if the need to escape this hopeless situation and the despair over his sudden ineffectiveness grew too overpowering, he could just leave by this window. The long drop to the ledge far below would surely smash the bones and snuff out the life of even the most agile squirrel. It was a telling reflection of Matowick's current mental state that he was considering this course of action as a serious option.

"Captain."

Matowick glanced at the doorway to the corridor beyond. The slanting shafts of moonlight revealed the glinting bulk of Lord Urthblood, standing impassive as he regarded his Gawtrybe commander. The badger warrior had ordered that no candles, lanterns, lamps or torches be lit in any chamber or passage where a beast outside Salamandastron might be able to see it, not even on the landward side of the stronghold.

"Permission to resign, My Lord. I'm no good to you or anybeast else tonight. I'm ... sorry."

"Permission denied." Urthblood strode further into the room, crossing the floor to where Matowick sat. Perhaps the muted cacophony outside covered his footfalls, but it seemed that the badger moved with a phantom grace for so large a creature. "If you are impaired tonight, I will still need you tomorrow. Abellon and Mattoon have things in paw, so if you need the night to yourself, you may have it, Captain."

Matowick gazed down at the east slopes, and all the winged warriors that sat there now amongst the rocks. "You've got to use your gulls, sir. You've got to use them now."

"Grullon's folk will not fly in the dark. And they are not trained for night combat in any case. They would only end up wasting precious ammunition. When the morning comes, I will use them."

"When morning comes, will there be anything left to defend?"

"You overestimate this new weapon of Tratton's, Captain. So far we have suffered only very minor structural damage inside the mountain, and that only on the seaward side. This is a terror tactic, intended to rattle and intimidate us. In practical terms, these weapons are highly ineffective against a target like Salamandastron."

"And outside the mountain?" Matowick prompted.

Urthblood paused a moment before answering. "One of the tunnel entrances has partially collapsed. We may have lost a soldier or two there. And one of our catapults has been destroyed."

"Which one?"

"On the lower southwest flank."

Matowick nodded mutely. He'd sent a squirrel named Feil out to operate that catapult, along with a rat and two weasels from Mattoon's squad. All volunteers, of course ... and all now almost certainly dead.

"And, of course, all our fruit trees and gardens will be a total loss."

"At least we'll have fewer mouths to feed," Matowick said with a mirthless laugh. "I don't suppose we've scored any hits on any of those dreadnoughts?"

"Apparently not, although it is difficult to be sure one way or the other, with no access to the plateau and limited visibility out our seaward windows."

"Any word from Saybrook yet?"

"No. And I suspect we will not see any searats at our entrances while this bombardment continues. Not even Tratton would send his fighters into the middle of something like this. He will either halt this bombardment sometime after midnight and send in his troops then, or else keep it up all night to deprive us of our sleep and make us less battle ready. Either way, we will be prepared to meet them whatever Tratton has in mind."

A sudden flurry of activity farther down the east slope caught Matowick's attention. In the wan moonlight he could, with his keen squirrel vision, make out several beasts running around waving their paws frantically. The commotion centered around one of the areas where many of the glass globes had been carried out onto the mountainside in preparation for their use by Captain Scarbatta's gulls. He couldn't be sure, but Matowick thought he might have seen a puff of smoke or vapors coming from amidst the excitement. It was too far for him to discern any of their voices over the almost continuous background rumble of the searat barrage.

"My Lord, something seems to have happened down there ... "

"I will go investigate it. Look to yourself, Captain - this fight has only just begun, and I am sure to need you before it is over." Urthblood turned and left Matowick alone once more.

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The two squirrels and two weasels operating the catapult on Salamandastron's upper west slopes took a solemn pause in their firing routine. They'd just seen their companion gunners farther down the southwest flanks smote along with their weapon. Now the flaming splinters and fragments of the shattered device shed a flickering light over the lifeless forms of the squirrel, rat and two weasels lying strewn among the burning wreckage. The four onlookers had taken their own share of near misses, but thus far had avoided a direct hit on their position. With the unceasing fury of this bombardment, however, their luck could change at any moment.

"Right!" yelled their leader, a weasel named Monda. "Let's get off another shot, an' see if we can't smash some o' their riggin's or put a hole in one o' their hulls 'fore they put us outta commission!"

His comrades could hear only about half of Monda's words over the explosions thundering around them, but his meaning was clear. While the two squirrels cranked down the launching arm and latched it into place for another release, Monda and his fellow weasel Sking dowsed another boulder with vegetable oil and rolled it into the throwing bucket. Urthblood had had these large rocks prepared in advance, wrapping each with a layer of dried vines to absorb the flammable oil and keep them burning even after the bulky projectiles came to rest. The idea had been to set the dreadnoughts ablaze as well as damage them with the actual impacts, but that was before Tratton's fleet had so expertly slipped in under the cover of moonless dark, making the targeting of those ships a most difficult proposition. Now, the burning missiles did no more than reveal the degree to which the defenders' shots were going wide in the instant before each would splash into the sea to be extinguished to blackness in a hiss of steam. A very few succeeded in leaving tiny slicks of flame bobbing upon the wavetops for a brief moment before burning themselves out, but this was hardly sufficient to allow the mountain's defenders to pinpoint their enemy.

Seating their latest boulder securely to the catapult, Monda and Sking set it alight and stepped back, signalling to the squirrels to let it fly. With a snap and a swoosh and a rattle that could be heard even above the background cacophony, the giant weapon's sturdy arm whipped forward, flinging the fiery boulder seaward in an arc of yellow against the smoke-filled, star-bedecked night sky.

The massive projectile came down just short of one of the middle dreadnoughts, so close that its brief passage illuminated the name _Whiteclaw_ painted on the mighty warship's prow. Monda exhorted his team to hurry and try again.

"That one nearly got 'er, mates! Let's use a rock that's just a mite smaller, an' it should go further, an' we can get us our first hit o' this battle!"

They all hustled as one to prepare for the next shot, the squirrels frantically cranking back the catapult arm as the weasels rolled forward another small boulder and poured oil over it. Monda and Sking had to wait for their Gawtrybe teammates to finish with their own task, since they wanted to try to put the same amount of tension on the hurling arm as last time in order to insure that this shot would not fall short. As much as Monda begrudged those extra moments, he held his tongue; if this was going to work at all it had to be done right, and that meant taking the time not to make a sloppy job of it.

At last the squirrels nodded that they were ready. Monda and Sking grabbed the oil-soaked boulder and wrestled it up into the bucket. But even with the latticework of vines crisscrossing its surface, the rock was extremely unwieldy to maneuver, heavy and slick from the oil. Before they could get it firmly settled into the catapult, Monda lost his grip on the boulder and it fell off the weapon's deck and rolled across his unprotected footpaw. Gripping his smashed extremity, Monda fell to the ground yowling in pain.

The others rushed to his side, but Monda waved them away. "Ferget about me!" he cried through his tears. "Get that loaded an' loosed!"

The two squirrels took Monda's place at the boulder, struggling with Sking to hoist it into firing position. Barely had they gotten it up into the bucket when one of the searat weapons struck the ridge just above them. The blast knocked all three of them off their feet, momentarily stunned.

A second smoking keg from the sea followed hot on the heels of the first and smashed directly into the catapult frame. The big weapon, already under tremendous tension from its cocked throwing arm, came apart with lethal magnificence. One of the prostrate squirrels, still mercifully senseless from the initial explosion, had head, legs and tail separated from the rest of his body by the forcefully flying debris. The other squirrel fared somewhat better by comparison, taking a shivered timber through his heart, but his death was no less instantaneous than his fellow's.

Monda's broken footpaw ended up being his salvation, placing him on the ground where Sking fell on top of him after the first blast. The junior weasel shielded his commander with his body, although it was hardly by design.

When Monda recovered his wits, he grimaced at the sight that greeted him. The boulder intended for the _Whiteclaw_ had instead been hurled backward, hitting Sking and reducing his head to a bloody pulp. Sking had also suffered numerous lesser injuries on his back and legs, every one of those a potential wound to Monda that he'd been spared. The surviving weasel had not escaped entirely unscathed, acquiring a respectable assortment of cuts and bruises to go with his fractured foot.

Monda pushed Sking's nearly-headless corpse off of him and climbed to his one good foot. Taking stock of the carnage around him, he immediately realized that he was the sole survivor here, and his fallen comrades were beyond all help. Hobbling as best he could while praying that another explosion wouldn't extinguish his own life at any moment, he made for the nearest entrance into the mountain ...

... and found it completely collapsed when he finally got there, blocked beyond any hope of passage.

"Fur an' damnation!" Monda spat at nobeast in particular. Well, he'd volunteered for this, he reminded himself. But still, it didn't seem right. He'd done his best, and now he was out of this battle, his footpaw crushed, his catapult destroyed and the rest of his crew dead. He was a wounded beast in retreat, and by all rules of fairness he ought to be entitled to just step out of the action and take a bed in the infirmary. But war was never fair, and this was a war unlike any that had ever been fought before. Monda doubted the rats out on those ships could even see his pathetic, solitary figure against Salamandastron's immensity, and even if they could, it would be almost impossible for them to accurately target him. No, this was a random, faceless assault on the mountain itself, and those explosive casks didn't care where they landed or whether there happened to be anybeast standing where they fell.

Monda glanced left and right, trying to remember in his confusion the location of the next closest tunnel entrance. Of course, there was no guarantee that it wouldn't be collapsed too when he reached it. If he reached it ...

A calm settled over Monda then, the kind of serenity a creature feels when it knows death is at paw. A weasel who could barely walk, caught out on the naked mountainside in the middle of this nightmarish hellfury. There was no way he was getting out of this alive ... so it didn't matter what he did, did it?

Monda started climbing straight up toward the crater rim above him. The mountain narrowed slightly as it neared its blunt summit, affording less of a target for the searat bombardiers, and thus the region between him and the plateau was taking somewhat less punishment than the lower slopes. Not that he would escape his impending fate even by taking the safest route. But if he was bound to die anyway, what difference did it make?

With explosions ripping the night above, below and to either side of him, Monda climbed. The agony in his foot receded to a dull and distant throbbing, an annoyance he refused to indulge.

When he reached the top alive and intact and hauled himself over the crater rim, Monda refused to allow himself to feel surprise. That would be acknowledging that he'd made it farther than any reasonable odds would have suggested, and that in turn might lead to optimism. And hope was the last thing he wanted to feel right now. Hopes could be dashed, as surely as his fragile body could be dashed across the rocks by these searat weapons.

Clearly the plateau had sustained a few direct hits, but it appeared that most of the shots directed here had fallen short. Monda stumped his way past a shallow crater within the crater, a scorched depression that gave mute testimony to where at least one of the explosive searat projectiles had succeeded in clearing the plateau wall. To abide here for any length of time would be to die.

Monda made it to the stone steps in the center of the mountaintop, but quickly discovered that a near-direct hit there had partially collapsed the tunnel at the bottom of the stairs, making it impassible. There would be no entry into Salamandastron here either.

The weasel sighed and limped back up to the plateau. As he cleared the top step there came a flash and a roar from a shot that hit just below the west rim. Monda picked himself up, dusted himself off, and stumped across to the opposite side of the mountaintop.

The moonlit view before him should have filled his heart with relief, but it left Monda curiously unaffected. The landward side of the mountain showed no sign of suffering even a single hit; apparently the searat catapults lacked the range to shoot all the way over the summit and strike at the eastern reaches of Salamandastron.

Still not daring to believe that he might have reached safety, Monda lowered himself over the east plateau rim and began to look for a safe way down to the nearest tunnel entrance.


	5. Chapter 56

Chapter Fifty-Six

Esquilin the mouse and Brotjer the squirrel were the appointed head healers of Salamandastron's infirmary. So far in this battle, their patient load had been surprisingly light, just a few scrapes and bruises from where outer passages and chambers had collapsed, along with the most minor of fractures and concussions. Two bodies had been pulled out of the rubble as well, and no doubt more lay buried beneath the various rockfalls, but that seemed to be the way of this engagement: Urthblood's defenders would either come out of it relatively unscathed or they would not come out of it at all. There was no middle ground here.

The two healerbeasts were wholly unprepared when Trelayne's assistant glassmaker Tolomeo was borne into the infirmary on a litter. The mouse lay moaning upon his stretcher in a state of semiconscious delirium, and with good reason: both of his legs ended in smoldering stumps just below the knees. Trelayne and Urthblood followed on the heels of the litter-bearers, concern plain even on the face of the normally impassive Badger Lord.

"What happened to him?" Esquilin inquired as helpers transferred Tolomeo onto a bed. "I thought you were working on the east slopes, away from the bombardment?"

"We were." Trelayne wrung his paws in worry; the marten glassblower seemed positively traumatized. "But the explosions are sending vibrations through the rock all throughout Salamandastron, making the ground tremble slightly even on the landward side of the mountain. Tolomeo saw one of the glass vitriol globes starting to shift as though it might fall, and rushed over to catch it. Unfortunately he wasn't quick enough. It tumbled and ruptured, and the vitriol gushed out over him."

"Um ... where're the rest of his legs?" Brotjer asked, vaguely nauseated.

"That's all that's left of them," said Trelayne. "The glass vitriol is totally unforgiving of living flesh ... and most other substances, for that matter."

The healer squirrel made a distasteful face. "Remind me never to go swimming in that stuff. Why wasn't he wearing boots or something?"

"No boots we have on paw would have done Tolomeo much good - the vitriol would have eaten right through them as if they weren't there. Any protective garments would have to be coated with beeswax to be at all effective, and I've never had much luck successfully designing anything along those lines that actually worked, since the wax invariably cracks and leaves gaps where the fluid could get through. No, when working with such deadly substances, it's better just to dress as you normally do, so that you're more comfortable and less likely to have an accident due to the clumsiness of unfamiliar garments."

While Esquilin, Brotjer and their assistants did what they could for the chemically-maimed mouse, Urthblood took Trelayne aside. "The remaining vitriol globes must be carried down to the sandy plain off the mountainside, so that this does not happen again."

"That's already being done, My Lord." Trelayne continued to fidget with the hem of his smock, his eyes never leaving his apprentice. "I do hope Tolomeo will be all right. He's been with me for seasons. I've seen beasts suffer less exposure to the vitriol than that who've still died of shock. That's the main thing your healers must tend to."

"Brotjer and Esquilin are the most skilled medics I have at Salamandastron," Urthblood assured the marten. "If anybeasts here can save Tolomeo's life, they can. Let us look now to those who are still working - and fighting - outside. You should personally oversee the removal of the remaining vitriol globes to a safer location. We cannot afford to lose any more of them, especially now that there are only two able-bodied glassblowers left in Salamandastron."

00000000000

Lieutenant Perricone had taken charge of the bolt-launcher batteries positioned inside the mountain's main, seaward-facing gates. She couldn't imagine where Matowick had gotten to, but then he did have the entire fortress to consider, since Urthblood had placed the primary defense of all of Salamandastron's windows and entrances in the paws of the more than two hundred and fifty Gawtrybe stationed here. Knowing her diligent betrothed, Matowick was probably sprinting up and down all the tunnels and stairs, making sure every window slit was defended and every outer chamber guarded. There was absolutely nothing the squirrel archers could do against the kind of assault Tratton was unleashing upon them now, but if those seavermin tried to storm their way into the stronghold, they would be cut down in such numbers that it would make the Searat King's head spin. And any who succeeded in gaining entry would quickly learn that Salamandastron was to become their tomb, as the passages would soon become too clogged with their arrow-pierced corpses for anybeast to move.

Still, the thunderous tumult was worrisome. Down here in the main entry hall, the hammering rumbles surrounded the defenders on all sides. Near misses caused the heavy wooden gates to rattle and shudder on their hinges, but even strikes farther to the sides and higher up the slopes sent booming reverberations throughout the spacious chamber. Perricone was not close to suffering the same kind of traumatic breakdown to which her captain and fiance had succumbed, but she did wonder with no small degree of anxiety what damage all this was causing to the upper levels of the fortress. Here, there were no windows, only thick rock walls between them and the beach outside. As long as the main gates held, this might well be one of the safest places within Salamandastron. And if they didn't, well, then things down here would become very interesting very quickly.

High rock ledges formed a sort of natural gallery overlooking the entry hall on all three sides. Four of the bolt launchers sat positioned upon these open balconies, each crewed by a team of Gawtrybe trained in their use. If the gates did fall, those weapons could cut down literally a hundred searats in the opening moments of any massed assault. Then they could be rapidly reloaded to cut down a hundred more, if the invaders were stupid enough to keep coming. But nobeast here was counting on the good sense of searats ... which was why dozens more archers stood at the ready behind the launchers, supplied with a score of arrows apiece. If Tratton made this the focal point of an attack, his rats would pay in blood.

As she prowled back and forth along the galleries, trading lighthearted pleasantries with her fellow Gawtrybe and offering whatever words of encouragement she could, Perricone threw a glance toward the clay canisters resting at the back of one ledge. These would be their last line of defense if things went horribly wrong and they were forced to retreat farther into the mountain: six jars of the sleep-inducing Flitchaye gas that Urthblood had had brought up from the armory. If it looked like they were about to be overwhelmed, Perricone and her squirrels would smash the stoneware containers against the rock floor below and withdraw while the narcotic vapors did their work. Then, hopefully, the Northlanders would be able to return to secure the entry hall again.

All ruminations of such strategies to come were abruptly hammered from the Lieutenant's mind by an ear-shattering roar, a duet of thunder and splintering wood unlike anything heard in the entrance hall thus far. Many of the squirrels were thrown off their feet, and three did not get up again, speared by sharp wooden fragments.

Balancing unsteadily on all fours, Perricone shook her ringing head to clear it, then glanced toward the gates. It took a moment for the sight before her to register, but when it did her heart skipped a beat. Where there should have been a solid wall of heavy timbers was instead only smoky darkness. She was looking out onto the mountain-shadowed beach and, beyond that, the moonlit wavetops.

The searats had scored the ultimate direct hit: the gates were gone.

"Put out all lanterns and torches!" Perricone shouted into the confusion. Most of the Gawtrybe here had not been part of the assault mission on the searat timber mill, and lacked firstpaw experience in what Tratton's newest weapons could do. Now they knew.

"Get them all out!" the Lieutenant urged, running along the ledges. "The gate's gone, and they'll be able to see right in here! We don't want to give away our position, or our numbers!"

As the lights began dimming one by one, a quaking voice asked from somewhere behind Perricone, "But then how will we see to shoot?"

"Don't worry, your eyes will adjust! It's a full moon tonight, and some of those gate timbers are still burning." She found herself repeating this several times; now that the heavy doors no longer stood between them and the outside, every new explosion from the nearer slopes roared in at them unabated. "If they attack with fighters, they'll be the ones running from light into dark! We'll see them, but they won't see us!"

Once all sources of illumination were extinguished to her satisfaction, Perricone thought of something else she'd better add. "Remember, Captain Saybrook's otters are supposed to be patrolling the tideline, on the alert for any searat landing boats! If they spot Tratton's forces trying to make for shore, and there's any way at all they can let us know, you can be sure they will! So, if you see anybeast coming our way, hold your fire until you're sure it's not an otter! We don't wanna slay our own, especially if they're trying to warn us!"

Perricone made the rounds of her archers, from one end of the galleries to the other, until she was sure every squirrel had heard and understood this latest order. Then she found a relatively quiet corner for herself and settled down onto her haunches for a few moments' rest, and to try to calm her pounding heart.

"Saybrook, matey, I hope you're still out there," she muttered into the noisy night. "'Cos we sure as acorns need you now!"

00000000000

It took the full expenditure of the otters' willpower to keep their attention focused seaward while Salamandastron was being pounded behind their backs. Of course they would occasionally sneak a peek over their shoulders to see how their master's stronghold was faring ... and thus it was that they saw almost immediately when the main gates had been demolished.

The veteran otter Tulia, after some brief and frantic consultation with her nearest companions, flopped onto her belly in the shallow surf and swam off in search of Saybrook. The otters had established their patrol line in the zone where the water only came up to their shoulders, or at most just a little over their heads. This way, if Tratton had any of those accursed armored submersibles on the prowl, those craft would hopefully ground themselves before they could reach the otters' defensive line.

Tulia surfaced alongside her commander, tapping Saybrook on the shoulder for his attention. "Cap'n, sir! Th' main gates're gone!"

"Yah, I saw," Saybrook muttered. "All th' more reason we gotta stay extra sharp out here."

"But, sir - oughtn't some o' us head up there t' see if they need our help?"

"Help with what, Tully? They can see perfectly well fer themselves what's happened ... an' they'll have a better fix on what's t' be done about it than we would."

"But ... what if they were all wiped out in th' entry hall, an' th' rest of th' mountain doesn't realize it?"

"Very much doubt that's th' case, Tully. Those gates took th' brunt o' that blast ... which is why they're all smashed now. They may've taken some casualties in there, but you can bet there's still a solid line o' stouthearted squirrels standin' at th' ready back inside that darkness, an' woe to any searat who tries t' get past 'em! It'd take another of them thunderkegs lobbed right through that open archway t' dislodge our Gawtrybe friends, an' I doubt Tratton's gonna get such a lucky shot twice in one night ... "

"They hit the gate," Tulia countered. "They might be able to hit where the gate used to be."

"Mebbe," Saybrook considered. "An' if they do, we'll worry 'bout it then. Fer now, that's all th' more reason fer us t' stay put. Those Gawtrybe've got their duty, an' we got ours, an' who's gonna guard these shores if we go runnin' up there an' get ourselves blown up along with our squirrel mates?" He shook his head as he regarded the besieged mountain. "Can't be easy, aimin' a weapon like a catapult from aboard a ship, even one that's at anchor on relatively calm seas. Every shot they're makin' tonight's by luck, far as knowin' exactly where their lobs are gonna fall. See fer yoreselves - they're just throwin' those explodin' casks at Salamandastron fast as they can, hittin' ev'ry part of th' mountain they can reach an' hopin' a few o' their shots get lucky an' do us some damage. Surprised they're doin' as well as they are, consid'rin'."

"A few lucky shots might be all they need," Tulia said morosely.

"Naw. This's mostly bluster 'n thunder, what they're doin' now. That fortress there's solid granite, an' fused to the bedrock under th' coastal sands. Tratton would hafta bombard it like this ev'ry night fer a hunnerd seasons afore Salamandastron would crumble. No, he ain't gonna win this contest with this new weapon o' his. If that slimy sea tyrant wants t' boot Lord Urthblood outta his rightful home, he's gonna hafta commit troops, an' lots of 'em. It's like that badger told us: Tratton's main aim with this stormfury display might just be t' give cover to 'is landin' forces. An' that's where we come in ... which is why we're stayin' put."

Saybrook glanced skyward. "Good news is, that full moon's gonna give us plenny of light t' see by, most o' th' way 'til dawn. Unless Tratton's got somethin' that can shoot down th' moon, my guess is he'll wait until full dark t' land his fighters - prob'ly in the hour or two 'fore daybreak."

"So I reckon we're gonna be out here in th' brine all night ... " Tulia gazed at Salamandastron as two more booming flashes exploded upon its seaward face. "Then again, I s'pose there's worse places to be."

00000000000

The moment Matowick heard about the destruction of the main gate, he was off and running like a red wind down through the mountain's tunnels and stairs. The main entry chamber was where he should have been ... and where he'd left Perri to look after things in his stead while he'd slunk off to hide like a frightened little child cowering from a thunderstorm.

The Gawtrybe captain burst out onto the ledge overlooking the entry hall, panting hard, and found himself standing in near-total darkness. It took him the space of several hammering heartbeats to realize what was going on. Of course once the gates were gone the defenders here had extinguished all the torches, just as he would have ordered done had he been present.

"Perri!" he whispered hoarsely as his eyes adjusted and he realized his fellow squirrels stood all around him. "Where's Lieutenant Perricone?"

"Over there, Captain." One of the Gawtrybe pointed; Matowick could only just discern the gesture by the few flickering flames of the shattered gate's wreckage. The squirrel captain raced around the ledge, dodging around archers and launcher carriages until he found the Lieutenant standing on the gallery along the south side of the hall.

"Perri!" She barely had time to turn his way and recognize her fiance before he caught her up in an embrace so tight that she had trouble drawing breath. So, naturally, she squeezed him back just as hard. It was the height of unprofessionalism to engage in such an open display, a flagrant violation of disciplinary conduct in the midst of a battle ... and neither of them cared. For a brief instant the maelstrom raging outside disappeared, and the world shrank to just the two of them, safe in each other's paws.

And then the urgency of their immediate situation reasserted itself, and they found themselves once more in the middle of a war, with dozens of fighters waiting on their commands. "How bad is it?" Matowick asked.

"Three slain when we lost the gates," Perricone reported. "Other than that, just minor injuries and a lot of ringing ears."

"I can certainly relate to that," Matowick grinned in the dark.

"It could have been much worse. And it will be, if they land another shot where that last one hit. There won't be any gates to stop the next keg from coming right into this hall."

"I doubt that will happen."

"Oh? Are you so sure their aim is that bad?"

"It's not that," Matowick explained. "But remember how catapults work, Perri. They cast their ammunition in a high arc that brings it down on their targets from above. They don't shoot along a straight, level line like we do with our arrows. And since we're back beneath the overhang of the mountain, and there's no way Tratton can fire those weapons of his straight in at us, we should be safe."

"No way that you know of, you mean. Tratton's surprised us before, and that's what worries me. Even if they can't strike directly at us up here on the ledges, a keg landed down on the floor below might still be enough to kill quite a few of us and put our defenses here in disarray. We shouldn't both be here, Matty. If we were both to be slain, it would leave the Gawtrybe without a commander in Salamandastron."

"Lord Urthblood is their commander. And he has other captains - Abellon, Mattoon, Saybrook ... "

"You know what I mean. The Gawtrybe would respond best to having one of their own to follow. You should leave, Matty. I can handle things down here."

"It's not really any safer in the upper levels," Matowick told her. "We've lost a number of troops in tunnel collapses already. I'm probably in no more danger here than I would be in any other part of the mountain."

"Liar. Anywhere on the landward side of the mountain would be much safer than here in this hall."

"Yes, but that's not where the battle is, is it? What kind of commander would I be if I kept myself safe while I asked the rest of the Gawtrybe to expose themselves to danger?" Matowick directed this last statement as much at himself to shame his previous behavior in his own eyes as to argue his point with Perricone.

"I'm sure there are other parts of the fortress which require your attention," she pressed.

"Are you leaving?"

"Me? No. Of course not."

Matowick took Perricone's paw firmly in his own. "Then neither am I."

00000000000

Monda lay in the infirmary bed alongside Tolomeo's.

The weasel still had only the vaguest memory of how he had made it back inside Salamandastron alive. Once he'd lowered himself over the plateau's east rim, he'd wandered down the slopes in his trancelike daze past a window guarded by Gawtrybe. They might have shot him for a searat, since none of Urthblood's creatures were about anywhere this far up the mountainside, but he was saved by their hesitancy over the fact that he was coming _down_ the incline and not up it as an enemy most likely would. The bright moonlight helped the defenders identify him as a weasel rather than a rat, so they'd helped him in through their window and found a couple of beasts to support him on his way down to the infirmary.

The squirrel Brotjer was just putting the finishing touches on Monda's foot cast. "There! Can't say it's good as new, but with half a season or so of convalescence, you should be walking on it again pretty normally."

"Was afraid you'd hafta amputate, consid'rin' how smashed up it was."

"Oh, broken bones an' split skin's a lot easier to deal with than damage to beast's vitals," said Brotjer, "even if all those tiny bones in the paws do present a bit of a challenge. But I'm confident I set all your fractures, knit your sinews and stitched your gashes reasonably well. The flesh looked pink and felt warm after I was finished, indicating the blood's flowing as it should. Crushed blood vessels are the main cause for injured limbs going rotten, along with infections."

"Well, thanks fer yer help. I really didn't expect t' get off that mountainside alive. Don't s'pose you've heard from any o' the other catapult crews? I know one of 'em got hit 'fore we did."

Brotjer shook his head. "None have come down our way. We're pretty well removed from the battle down here, even if you can still hear the explosions coming through the rock a little."

Monda nodded toward the comatose form of Tolomeo lying in the next bed. Even with the covers pulled up to his chest, it was obvious that the mouse was missing his lower legs. "What about him? I thought he might've been part o' one o' the crews ... tho' I don't 'member any mice bein' asked t' volunteer fer that duty ... "

"Oh, no, he wasn't anywhere near the primary bombardment zone. Chemical accident, out on the east slopes. Don't know if we'll be able to save him - he may have already lapsed into shock."

"Too bad. Kinda reminds me of an old sayin' I heard once, 'bout a beggar feelin' sorry fer 'imself 'cos he had no shoes, 'til he met a beast who had no footpaws t'all. Guess I got no cause fer complaint, all things considered. Lotsa creatures gonna come outta this worse'n me." Monda let his gaze travel around the infirmary. "Tho' I must say I didn't expect t' see so many empty beds down 'ere."

"Still early in this contest yet," the healer squirrel said. "Much as I'd like to see all those beds stay empty, I'm afraid most of them will find somebeast to fill them before very much longer."

00000000000

Sometime after midnight, the pace of the bombardment slacked off considerably. But Tratton did not let up entirely; everytime the frazzled defenders might have dared to hope that they'd heard the last of the booming concussions, the searats would unleash another stormpowder keg or two just to remind the woodlanders that they hadn't gone away. It was a strategy intended to keep the Northlanders from getting any meaningful sleep, and for the most part it succeeded brilliantly.

But for the unflappable Urthblood - whose own followers remained forever uncertain as to whether he ever slept at all - this was not any kind of impairment. The badger warrior never once let up on his nonstop patrolling of his stronghold, checking on the status of his troops and the mountain's structure and offering steadfast words of encouragement that left no doubt they would persevere and prevail. All they had to do was keep the enemy out of the fortress until daybreak, he assured them, and then the tide of this battle would turn dramatically with the coming of dawn.

"Tratton has not hesitated in demonstrating his new weapon for our benefit," Urthblood said more than once that night, for the morale of his beleaguered fighters. "Come morning, we will return the favor, and see how Tratton likes it."

Two hours before dawn, the Badger Lord returned to the roof of his battered mountain with long glass in paw, intent upon monitoring the four dreadnoughts as closely as was possible. No shot had been heard to explode up on the plateau since before midnight, and now that the bombardment had become intermittent at best, Urthblood wanted to reclaim that symbolic summit for his own. Captain Mattoon, however, voiced his misgivings as he stood beside his badger master watching his weasels and rats clearing the rubble from the collapsed passage leading to the roof stairs.

"Are y' sure this's a good idea, M'Lord? This may just be a trick t' lure you out t' where they can get you ... "

"The tide is running out again, Captain. Those dreadnoughts can no longer hug as close to shore as they were when they were regularly hitting the plateau. We have seen through some of the seaward windows that they have had to haul up their anchors and move farther offshore. That will provide a satisfactory margin of safety."

"I still think it could be a ruse, sir. What if they've got a bigger catapult they ain't used yet, one that can hit th' plateau from further out?"

"Then I will duck quickly. Are you coming, Captain?"

Mattoon swallowed any further protests, stifled his qualms as best he could and wordlessly followed after Urthblood through the now-cleared corridor. The weasel officer couldn't help throwing worried glances at what was left of the tunnel roof as they passed beneath it, wondering whether it too might decide to come down on them before they reached the stairs.

Despite his fears, they reached the plateau safely. Urthblood made straight for the seaward crater rim, his smooth stride not breaking even when another of the occasional explosions lit up the slopes below them. Mattoon joined the badger at the plateau's edge.

The moon, which had first appeared over the mountain range to the east, now hung low over the western ocean horizon where it would soon disappear beneath the dark curve of the sea. The full yellow disc backlit the quartet of searat warships, silhouetting their partly-furled sails and riggings in sharp definition by its bright silver light. It would have been a beautiful sight under different circumstances.

"Moon's almost down," Mattoon observed, stating the obvious to fill the silence while Urthblood studied the situation more closely through his telescope. "Think they'll attack once it gets dark again?"

The badger was so long in answering that Mattoon started to think Urthblood hadn't heard him. But at length the larger beast folded his long glass against his iron wrist stump and snapped the compacted instrument back into its holder on his red armor.

"No, Captain, I do not. I see no signs that they are making any move to lower and crew landing boats. Of course they could be engaged in such preparations around on the seaward sides of the dreadnoughts - Captain Saybrook said the searats he fought along the coast employed such surprise tactics - but I do not think that will be the case this time. Even if they attempt a mass landing now, it is too late. They have waited too long."

"Even so, M' Lord, a thousand or so searats throwing themselves at us 'tween now an' dawn won't be any easy thing. Could still get pretty ugly, if Tratton presses this."

"We still don't know for certain whether the conquest of Salamandastron is even Tratton's real aim," said Urthblood. "With the coming of day he will see that we stand firm against all that he has thrown at us. It could be that this was just a demonstration of his sea power as a prelude to negotiations."

Mattoon couldn't believe what he was hearing. This hellacious onslaught, and all the death and destruction it had caused, a mere bit of diplomatic maneuvering? "Yah, or they could see they've destroyed th' main gates an' decide they'll never get another oppertunity like this again!"

"The Gawtrybe will hold that entry. They have the firepower to hold back any force of Tratton's that tries to gain the mountain that way. Any who try will find themselves being cut down from in front while their ships burn at their backs."

Mattoon studied Urthblood hard in the silvery moonglow. "Wouldja really talk with Tratton, if he broke off 'is attack now an' put up a flag o' truce?"

"Not quite yet," the badger rumbled. "Remember what I said yesterday: no leader will enter into negotiations from anything but a position of strength if he can help it. At the moment, Tratton holds the upper claw, or at least believes he does. Yes, I will consider meeting with him ... but only after I have shown him who truly holds power over Salamandastron and these coastlands."


	6. Chapter 57

Chapter Fifty-Seven

As the longest night in Salamandastron's history came to an end and the moonless dark began to yield to the ghostly skyglow of approaching dawn, three of the dreadnoughts - the _Thunderchild_, the _Stormbringer_ and the _Whaleslayer_ - moved farther out to sea beyond catapult range. All three of Urthblood's catapults had in truth been destroyed by the all-night barrage, but the searats could not know whether the Badger Lord might be holding more of those weapons in reserve to be brought out onto the mountain slopes now that daylight had returned. Just to be safe, the bulk of the attack fleet would spend the day anchored beyond the reach of such artillery.

And, just to discourage Urthblood from deploying anymore of his long-range weaponry - assuming he still even had any - the _Whiteclaw_ remained in firing position, where she continued to lob stormpowder kegs at the fortress. This would allow her to target any team that attempted to haul out a new catapult and wrestle it into position on the seaward side of the mountain, and also make it difficult for any lookouts to get a bearing on what Tratton's ships were up to. Not to mention that the intermittent explosions would continue to keep the woodland defenders on edge and sleep-deprived.

Or so went the Searat King's plans. No spirit of negotiation or diplomatic intent resided in Tratton's purpose. He meant to take Salamandastron, plain and simple. If Urthblood did not withdraw, he commanded a great enough force of searats to overwhelm any defenses the badger might have and slay him ... after, of course, Tratton's bombardments had pulverized the fortress to dust around Urthblood's ears.

The searat ruler stood upon the steel deck of his ironclad the _Wedge_, using his long glass to closely examine Salamandastron through a gap between his reconfigured fleet. Tanzillo and several of the guards and crew stood behind him, waiting upon their Lord's whim. The gathering daylight gave sufficient visibility for Tratton to make out the shattered catapults and the demolished main gates. He smiled cruelly at this vista of destruction, fangs gleaming in the dawn's early light.

"The gates are down! We'll be able to march right into the mountain - we won't even need a battering ram!"

"They're sure to have a whole army of them damned squirrel archers waitin' inside t' cut us down when we storm 'em," Tanzillo worried.

"Then it's a good thing I've supplied our infantry with full body shields," Tratton snapped. "The best bowbeast in the world will have trouble killing a soldier who's behind a solid wall of heavy wood or hammered steel. All we have to do is get enough rats into that entryway to force them into paw-to-paw combat, and then they won't know what hit them ... especially after another two days and nights of stormpowder fusillades leaves them so starved for sleep that they'll be swaying on their feet with exhaustion and barely able to see straight!"

"Yah, but no searat's ever been inside Salamandastron - none that's lived t' tell about it, leastways," said Tanzillo. "We don't know what that badger's got waitin' fer us in there. For all we know, he could have that tunnel rigged to collapse on us once we get a hunnerd or two of our fighters inside - bring it right down on their heads!"

Tratton's gaze remained fastened upon the ravaged mountain as he flashed a wicked grin. "I'd be willing to bet we've already collapsed a tunnel or two of Urthblood's on our own. If he wants to wreck his own fortress to kill a few of our advance troops, I welcome him to do so. He'll only be sealing off one of his escape routes ... and sealing himself inside his own tomb. We'll still be able to attack through the side entrances, and we should have no trouble taking the plateau as well. We'll leave him the east tunnels to make his getaway, if he's sensible. Otherwise, we'll so overwhelm him and his defenses that they won't be able to lift a paw to stop us. There won't be a single squirrel, mouse, otter or shrew left alive in that mountain by the time I'm through here!"

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While Tratton voiced his unknowingly futile schemes offshore aboard the _Wedge_, his foe was setting in motion the chain of events designed to frustrate the Searat King.

Urthblood stayed atop the mountain just long enough to assure himself that three of the dreadnoughts were moving off to take up position farther out, leaving only one of the giant warships close to shore. Satisfied that this would be the formation they would hold until sunrise, he started down to the east slopes to issue orders accordingly.

"Several more of the globes burst before we could get them all moved off the rocks," Trelayne reported upon the badger's arrival. "Thankfully, there were no further injuries. Have you heard how Tolomeo is doing, My Lord?"

"I have not been to the infirmary since before midnight, so I cannot say how he fares," Urthblood replied, taking stock of the inventory of fragile ammunition arrayed upon the coastal sands at the east foot of Salamandastron. "It appears we still have enough left for our purposes."

"I should hope so!" the marten glassmaker huffed. "Considering that we started with over two hundred. Everybeast out here is exhausted from carrying these down all night - it's both draining and nervewracking to work with such dangerous materials, having to watch every step and pawhold to make sure nobeast else ends up like poor Tolomeo. I made sure all the vitriol globes were moved first while we were all still at our freshest. Taking a few shards of glass and a bath of oil would be a minor mishap by comparison, as long as there's no fire about. Of course, tired as we all are, I suppose we would still have rather been out here on this duty than where the real fighting was going on."

"There was nothing this past night that I would call fighting," the badger rumbled. "Tratton unleashed his full destructive capabilities upon us from a distance at which we had no hope of striking back. That is hardly what I would classify as a battle. Perhaps now we can show him how it feels to be on the receiving end of such treatment." Urthblood looked over Trelayne and his fox assistant. "Perhaps you and Kyslith should try to get some rest. If all does not go as planned this morning, we may need more ammunition in the days to come. The two of you may have more glassblowing yet to do."

"If it's all the same, My Lord," said Trelayne, "this may be my only chance to see in action what we've been slaving away on all this time. From what I gather, we'll know very quickly whether this strategy you have in mind proves successful."

"As you wish." Urthblood glanced up at a rotund winged form that came wobbily flying toward him out of the blue-gray dawn sky. King Grullon made a somewhat awkward and distinctly unmajestic landing before the Badger Lord.

"Craaagh! So, Lord Stripedog still alive! King Grullon wonder, see mountain under fire and thunder all night, think searats kill all groundcrawlers here, yeearch!"

"Tratton's new weapon creates great spectacle, but is less than fully effective against a target like Salamandastron," Urthblood smoothly explained. "As you can see, I have kept all your gulls safe, and the vast majority of my own troops have survived the night without injury. We are stronger than Tratton realizes."

Grullon's avian features displayed clear signs of doubt. "So many searats, such big boats. Too many for stripedog, King Grullon thinks ... "

"My attack on Tratton's timber compound was calculated to draw precisely this response from him. When I planned that assault, I was unaware of this new weapon of his, but it changes little. Those ships out there are still made of wood and canvas and pitch, and we have already proven we can deal with those. In a way, my preemptive strike turned out better than I'd envisioned: it forced Tratton to tip his paw and reveal his secret weapon before he might have wanted to, whereas I have succeeded in keeping my alliance with you from him. If Tratton suspected what I intend here, he would not have allowed a single ship of his anywhere near Salamandastron. Now we have four of his largest right on our doorstep ... targets we cannot possibly miss."

"That King Grullon's gulls cannot miss, you mean," the seagull king corrected.

"Your Majesty, when I first proposed an alliance with you, I promised I would give you the means and opportunity to kill many, many searats. The time has come for me to fulfill that promise. I have delivered to you the greatest army of searats ever gathered in one place. And when I strike, it will be your kin who deliver my blow. All your slain family and friends shall be avenged this day. Your brother's spirit will be able to rest easy when we are done here."

"Strike, then!" Grullon cawed impatiently. "What stripedog wait for?"

"Full daylight. If your gulls would agree to fly at night, this might all be over by now, and I might have been spared no small amount of inconvenience. As it stands, it will probably be best to wait until sunrise, when the light will be in the searats' eyes and your gulls will be able to see their targets clearly."

Grullon hopped from one webbed foot to another in eager anticipation; the sun could not appear above the eastern mountains soon enough to suit his tastes now. "King Grullon not see first time my gulls attack searats, was very disappointed then. Not miss this for all fish in sea!"

"Then may I recommend the plateau, Your Majesty?" Urthblood suggested, as much to get the gawky bird out of his staging area as anything. "It should be safe up there, now that those ships have moved off, and you will have a commanding view of what is to come."

"Good view, up mountaintop?" Grullon prompted.

"A perch fit for royalty ... of that I can assure you."

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"Yer breakfast's ready, Yer Majesty," one of Tratton's personal guards informed him.

"I'll be down presently," Tratton replied over his shoulder. "As soon as the sun rises ... "

And that would not be long at all. Already the sky glowed from horizon to horizon with the bright blue of full day, and the mountaintops to the east shimmered from behind with the imminent sunrise. Mossflower and the Western Plains almost assuredly basked in the golden rays at that very moment, as would the coastal plains themselves were it not for the mountain range that delayed the sun's first appearance over this seaside region.

Even though they lay at anchor, the three dreadnoughts which had moved farther offshore took this time to fully unfurl every sail in their riggings, displaying their full complements of red, black and green canvas to those looking on from within the mountain fortress. It was a bold and fearless challenge to the very spirit of Salamandastron itself, Tratton's way of telling his landbound adversary that he was the power here now, and he had no intention of going anywhere.

"Is that not a magnificent sight, Captain?" the Searat King said to Tanzillo as they stood atop the ironclad's deck beholding the stationary warfleet in all its splendor. Only Tratton's former flagship the _Whiteclaw_, which remained closer to the tideline so that it could continue to bombard Urthblood's stronghold, kept a majority of her sails furled. For now, with the full light of day about to spill across their formidable and fearsome grandeur, the other three dreadnoughts were to be purely showpieces ... but deadly ones, each capable of renewing its explosive assault on Salamandastron at a moment's notice, or disgorging an army of searat soldiers to place the mountain under siege.

"Our overnight bombardment must have shaken their confidence to the core," Tratton went on. "When the sun clears those peaks and sets ablaze the imperial colors, then they will despair, no matter how Urthblood goads them on - and then this battle will be half-won, without having to land a single rat or suffer even one casualty."

"It will be a victory talked about 'mongst ratkind fer a thousand seasons, Sire," Tanzillo assured his master in sycophantic tones.

"Longer than that, I should hope." Tratton threw a paw up to his brow to shade his eyes as the long-anticipated sunrise at last burst forth over the distant range, casting its slanted rays into their faces. "Now, Urthblood, gaze upon your doom, and tremble!"

It was Tanzillo, squinting into the morning glare along with the other crewbeasts and guards, who first saw the myriad of dancing silhouettes cresting the plateau of Salamandastron and flying out of the sun toward them. The fluttering, backlit shapes themselves were dark, but beneath each dangled a sparkling pearldrop of glittering light, crystalline specks that glistened in the sun's rays like airborne dewdrops. "Yer Majesty! Look!"

Tratton himself could make out the approaching forms no better than Tanzillo. He raised his spyglass to his eye for a better look, was momentarily blinded by the sun through the telescope, and redirected the instrument to the outer edge of the flock so he could study the birds without interference by the day's new light. "It's just seagulls," he grumbled as he realigned the long glass.

"Ain't never seen a flock of 'em so big, stickin' so close t'gether," Tanzillo remarked. "An' what're they carryin'?"

Tratton had by this time fastened his clear, glare-free telescopic gaze on the outer fringes of the living cloud. "No," he muttered to himself at what met his eye. "It can't be ... "

Even as he uttered these words, the hundred-strong flock of attack gulls split evenly into two groups of fifty apiece. The astonished crew of the _Whiteclaw_ stared up in amazement as the two clouds of globe-laden seabirds flew off to either side of their dreadnought, high enough to be out of arrow range but still low enough that their inexplicable payloads could clearly be seen.

The split squadron made straight for the _Whaleslayer_ and the _Stormbringer_ - the northernmost and southernmost warships of the outer trio. Once they were overhead, the gulls wasted no time in doing what they'd come to do.

"Nooo," Tratton moaned as he beheld the glass spheres raining down upon his two dreadnoughts. In his gut, he knew what was coming. His underlings, however, were still mystified.

"What's happenin'?" Tanzillo asked. "What're they doin'?"

The ironclad's captain didn't have to wait for his king to answer him. As they all looked on, the oil that had been smashed onto the two dreadnoughts' riggings to soak their fully-exposed sails was ignited by lit lanterns dropped by Altidor and Klystra, who'd flown in behind the gulls. Within moments the red, black and green canvas of both ships was hidden beneath yellow sheets of hungry flame.

"Fur an' claw!" one of the crewrats behind them murmured softly.

Tratton flew into a blind rage, screaming as he bashed his unfortunate spyglass repeatedly against the steel rail of the _Wedge_'s top deck.

"No!" _Smash!_ "No!" _Smash!_ "No!" _Smash!_ "NOOO!"

Tanzillo was still utterly at a loss. He may have made a very capable - if not overly ambitious and thus unthreatening - skipper of the ironclad, but he was no strategic mastermind. Not that any searat had ever witnessed such a thing as he just had ... and lived to tell about it.

"What just happened?" he asked stupidly of norat in particular. "How ... "

Tratton flung his ruined long glass into the sea and turned on his pilot. "It's Urthblood, damn his bloodstained soul to Hellsgates! He's made an alliance with the seagulls! While we've been hunting them for food, he's been training them as warriors!"

The others, even Tanzillo and Tratton's personal guards, backed away from the raging Searat King as unobtrusively as they could. When their master fell into a mood like this, he might vent his wrath by slaying even his most loyal subjects.

For the moment, however, Tratton merely stood with fangs clenched and claws tightened in a deathgrip around the deck railing, watching his dreams of conquest go up in flames. With four dreadnoughts, he might have had a very good chance of conquering Salamandastron; with only two, it would be almost impossible. And this battle was not over yet. Urthblood had not lost a single gull in this surprise attack, and now those birds were flying back to Salamandastron, perhaps to resupply themselves for a second wave. Even if they didn't, a third dreadnought might be doomed anyway. With the _Whaleslayer_ and the _Stormbringer_ burning fore and aft of her, the _Thunderchild_ was trapped, since no vessel that large would be able to maneuver her way sideways from between the two blazing dreadnoughts.

The gulls had done a most thorough job of dousing the sails of the two ships with oil; the infernos raging aboard both vessels quickly became so fierce and all-consuming that it was clear the firefighting apparatus they carried would be utterly incapable of quelling the flames. Both ships were lost.

"Move us away," Tratton commanded with cold calm. "Before those flames find their way to the main stormpowder magazines on those two ships."

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King Grullon wobbled from one webbed talon to the other as he danced with glee.

"Yeeaargh! Searat boats burn, burn! Happy day for seagulls! Happy, happy day, creeaack!"

Lord Urthblood stood back from the ecstatically whirling gull king with several of his captains. Their vantage from the plateau here did indeed afford a commanding view of the unconventional battle unfolding offshore. The two dreadnoughts that Urthblood had initially targeted were now fully engulfed in flame, from their topmasts to their wide decks, while the third warship was stuck helplessly between them, incapable of escaping the fiery craft that trapped her fore and aft. As the Northland commanders and Grullon looked on, the flames found a stack of powder casks piled on the deck of the southernmost dreadnought. The explosion rocked the dying ship, sending deadly wood shivers in all directions and tumbling the nearest catapult off its firing platform and into the sea.

"Our task is not yet completed," Urthblood announced. "The two dreadnoughts remaining still represent a formidable fighting force that could seriously threaten us. Only when a third dreadnought is destroyed will we be assured of victory."

Another explosion, this one from the northernmost ship, shook the stricken vessel and ended the lives of many more searats.

"Looks like that one in th' middle can't go nowhere," Captain Mattoon observed. "If them kegs keep explodin' like that, mebbe we won't hafta do anything else - it'll catch fire an' be destroyed on its own."

"I don't plan on leaving that to chance," Urthblood told the weasel.

"And what about the fourth dreadnought, that's still lobbing those thunderkegs at us?" Abellon inquired. "You thinking they'll pull up anchor and scram once they see they're alone?"

"They very well may," the badger said, "although I am hoping they do not flee in utmost haste. I would not want to deny them the same attention we are paying to their comrades in arms."

"Well, their sails're more'n half-lowered," Mattoon commented, "so whatever they do, they won't be doin' it in a hurry ... "

"Looks like that other dreadnought further out is also taking down some of their sails," Abellon added. "Must be they're trying to lessen the chances of the fires on either side of them spreading to their sails."

Urthblood nodded. "Not to mention reducing the amount of flammable material that will be exposed and vulnerable in the event of further attacks. The captain of that vessel has a good strategic head on his shoulders. It is a pity he will not survive this day."

A third explosion came from the distressed dreadnoughts, but its thunder was drowned out by a much closer blast as another of the searat weapons hit the western slopes below where they stood.

"We'd best clear the plateau," the badger rumbled. "Now that we have struck back, we can expect the crewrats aboard the ship which is still bombarding us to redouble their efforts, if only out of desperation. Given their current position, it is unlikely that they could succeed in landing a shot up here, but they could always get lucky."

"King Grullon stay," the seagull ruler insisted, beak lifted in an imperious attitude. "Wanna see ships burn, rats die, craawk!"

"It may not be safe, Your Majesty."

Grullon rebuffed his red-armored host. "Searat thunder-boomers not catch King Grullon, fly faster than they can!"

"As you wish." Urthblood started ushering his own creatures toward the roof stairs. Abellon lingered a moment, staring over the crater rim at the surf below.

"My Lord, isn't it time we recalled Saybrook's team? Those otters have been bobbing around out there all night, with the worst of Tratton's assault right over them. Surely the searats on the nearest dreadnought wouldn't dare try a troop landing on their own, without the aid of the other ships?"

"Deperate warriors may resort to anything," said Urthblood. "For now, I want Saybrook and his squad to stay right where they are. Even if those searats do not attempt a landing, our otters may still have a decisive part to play in this day's events."

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When the captain of the _Thunderchild_ saw the second wave of glass globe-bearing seagulls emerge from behind Salamandastron, he ordered every archer rat under his command up into the riggings. Having seen what Urthblood's birds had done to the _Whaleslayer_ and _Stormbringer_, he knew his only hope was to shoot down those winged warriors before they could get into position above his vessel.

His preparations proved futile. The gulls did not split their numbers for a dual attack this time, but concentrated their full attention on the _Thunderchild_. They hovered and wheeled high enough above the dreadnought so that even the uppermost rat archers would be unable to hit them. At such a height, many of their dropped globes missed their target and splashed harmlessly into the sea. But with a hundred gulls focusing all their efforts on a single craft, more than enough of the fragile, fuel-filled spheres found their mark.

Altidor, being the larger of the two raptors, took an arrow through one wing and another in the leg as he and Klystra swooped low to unleash the ignition lamps upon the oil-saturated warship. Both birds had at least one arrow bounce off their heavy leather breastplates, and Klystra had a shaft clip his tailfeathers. Altidor faltered momentarily as he absorbed the impacts, but both the mighty eagle and his falcon companion successfully delivered their payloads.

In no time at all the _Thunderchild_ blazed twice as brightly as the ships on either side of her. The flames quickly found their way to the stormpowder casks stacked on deck by the catapults, and soon all three once-mighty vessels were being rocked in unison by the explosions destroying their weapons, ripping apart their decks and snuffing out the lives of their crews.

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Matowick, Perricone and the other Gawtrybe defenders within the main entry hall came down from their ledges and crowded the large open portal to witness Tratton's catastrophe. Nearly every jaw dropped at the incendiary sight before them. Some were greatly heartened by the overwhelming destruction being visited upon their foe, while others stood aghast in horror, but all were dumbstruck by the spectacle.

"Now _that's_ showin' them!" Matowick exulted at last.

Perricone was far from ecstatic. "There must be close to a thousand searats dead or dying out on those three ships right now. That's not the kind of victory I can celebrate."

Matowick threw his lieutenant a sharp glance. "Three of our own were carried out of here to the morgue last night, because of those seavermin. And who knows how many more of Lord Urthblood's troops died in that bombardment? Tratton brought this fight to us, and anybeast who serves that tyrant deserves whatever it gets!"

"Maybe so, but ... to use a tactic like this ... and on such a scale ... "

"Tratton would have smashed Salamandastron flat with his new weapon if he'd been able, and left not a single one of us alive," Matowick reminded her. "We're just giving him a taste of his own medicine."

"I hope you didn't just compare us to the searats," said Perricone. "I'd hate to see the day when we were brought down to their level."

Matowick took her paw in his own. "Don't worry. This will all be over soon."

Scarcely had these words passed his lips than two explosions boomed from the lower slopes outside, roaring in at the squirrels through the unprotected gateway while the concussions from the twin blasts made the rock around them shudder. It seemed the searats aboard the remaining dreadnought were intent upon picking up the pace of their bombardment while they still possessed the capability to do so.

"Will it?" Perricone asked into the subsiding thunder. "Be over soon? Or will this contest between badger and searat drag on, season after season, generation after generation, just as it always has - only now, with weapons that can cause greater death and terror than ever before?"

"Let Lord Urthblood kill a thousand or so of Tratton's fighters this day, and destroy half the searats' battle fleet, and you'll see how quickly this can be over, Perri. But for now," Matowick raised his voice, "I think we'd all better get farther back inside the mountain. Looks like those last rats out there are stepping up their attack again!"

As the Gawtrybe retreated to the stone ledges overlooking the entry hall, Urthblood himself stepped out onto the natural balcony along with Mattoon and several other weasels. Under Mattoon's direction, the newcomers gathered up the Flitchaye gas containers and bore them back into the mountain while the Badger Lord sought out Matowick.

"Captain, I need two volunteers from among your squirrels to go down to the sea's edge and call Saybrook's team back ashore."

"Uh, certainly, My Lord," Matowick said, one eye on the beasts taking away the narcotic mixture. "But, wouldn't that be more easily done by one of your birds?"

"The seagulls are required elsewhere. Besides, I suspect King Grullon might take it as an affront if I used his battle-trained gulls as messengers. And Altidor and Klystra both suffered hits from searat arrows on their last run. Altidor is down in the infirmary right now having his wounds tended; he was lucky to have made it back here under his own power. It should be safe out there on the beach for your squirrels, but I would still not order anybeast to leave the shelter of this mountain who was not willing to accept the risks."

"I understand, My Lord." Matowick remembered the last time he'd asked for volunteers at Urthblood's bidding, to crew the catapults out on the slopes. As far as the Gawtrybe captain knew, not a single one of those squirrels had made it back inside Salamandastron alive. "Are you recalling the otters because you're confident the searats won't try a land assault now?"

"Saybrook's work may be only just beginning," said Urthblood. "This battle is about to enter a new phase, and he must be issued orders accordingly."

"But, I see you taking away our supply of Flitchaye gas, so you must not deem it to be needed anymore. Are you going to have your gulls burn the fourth dreadnought as well?"

"The Flitchaye gas will be needed, Captain - just not here." The hulking badger warrior turned to follow after Mattoon. "I do not mean to destroy that last ship. I mean to capture it."


	7. Chapter 58

Chapter Fifty-Eight

For the better part of an hour, Daum and Tourki and the other former slaves could only stand spellbound by what they were seeing.

Their party had risen at first light, intent upon starting up the mountain trail early enough so that they could crest the most treacherous passes before evening. Daum, still conflicted about leaving behind his fellow Gawtrybe in the wake of the night's hellacious bombardment, set out with heavy heart and reluctant steps, leading his charges away from the battle. Orders were orders, and Daum would not disobey his.

Just a little way up into the foothills, however, the turn in the battle made everybeast in the company halt in their footsteps and stare back at the war arena with wide eyes and slack jaws. Their current vantage allowed them to see both the _Whaleslayer_ and the _Stormbringer_ around either limb of Salamandastron, and when the two dreadnoughts were transformed into blazing effigies of their own destruction, it was like the fleeing woodlanders were watching a terrible play being staged just for them. Terrible for the searats, in any event.

Their initial dumbstruck shock quickly gave way to triumphant whoops of victory. Most knew what it was like to endure the terrors of the stormpowder, having survived the trial with the _Sharktail_, and the slaves also remembered well the hardships of toiling in chains under the searats' whips with little to hope for but an early death. Nobeast there shared Lieutenant Perricone's reservations about Urthblood's methods. Tratton was only getting exactly what he deserved.

This reversal of fortune also freed Daum from any lingering doubts about his assignment. Tourki, glancing at the Gawtrybe squirrel, could clearly tell from Daum's expression what their guide must be thinking.

"Don't reckon there's any question o' which way this fight's gonna go now," the otter said. "That's half o' Tratton's attack fleet goin' up in flames out there ... an' fer all we know, the other two could be burnin' as well, behind Salamandastron where we can't see it. This battle's over, 'cept fer th' dyin' them rats're gonna be doin' ... "

Daum gave a nod. "You're right, Tourki. They didn't need me after all - thank the fates. Now, let's get all of you to Redwall!"

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The third searat warship to be set aflame was the first to give herself totally to the sea.

The explosion of the _Thunderchild_'s main powder magazine was terrifying and awe-inspiring in its majesty. Tratton had planned on a minimum of three days and nights of bombardment to soften up Salamandastron for his final assault, so each of the dreadnoughts still carried the major portion of their ammunition ... which was now to seal their doom. The _Thunderchild_ now followed the example of the _Sharktail_ and _Scorpiontail_, her mighty hull blowing apart from within with such force that the intact half of the vessel was propelled clear up out of the water. The burning ships fore and aft were also buffeted by the blast, tossed about like toys in a wash tub even as their fire-weakened masts were flattened. Farther toward shore, the pressure wave hit the _Whiteclaw_ broadside, the pitch and sway of her hull sending two of her catapulted kegs wildly off target. It was a good thing Saybrook's otters were all safely back within the mountain by this time, since one cask splashed into the waves right where the otters had been stationed, sending up an explosive geyser of its own, while the second impacted on the sandy stretch between Salamandastron and the tideline right where the otters and their Gawtrybe summoners had passed just moments before.

For those creatures who watched the unfolding disaster from the mountain fortress or the deck of the _Whiteclaw_, the monumental blast hit them like a blow to the gut, an air-rushing sensation more felt than heard that seemed to press upon their chests and stifle their breath. For Saybrook and Matowick and the others who'd witnessed the destruction of the _Scorpiontail_ and _Sharktail_, it was like a replay of their battles of the previous winter, but for those who still did not grasp the full power of Tratton's new weapon, it was an eye-opening moment. All the stormpowder that had been hurled at Salamandastron up to that point, had it been ignited at once, could not have equaled the force of the dreadnought's death knell. Even though the _Thunderchild_ stood well offshore, the mountain stronghold trembled now as it had not at anytime during the all-night bombardment.

The effect was no less momentous from the top of the ironclad farther out at sea. Tratton proved his seagoing wisdom in ordering the _Wedge_ moved away from the burning ships, but even at this respectable distance the steel-encased vessel was very nearly swamped by the wave swell created by the explosion.

None of the other rats aboard the Wedge dared utter a word or stand within striking distance of the livid Searat King. What was to be said at such a time as this, to a beast known to satisfy his displeasures with the blood of his own subjects?

Tratton had gone below while they'd backed away from the fiery disaster, not to enjoy his waiting breakfast - his appetite had completely abandoned him at the first sight of flames upon the imperial sails - but to fetch his spare spyglass. That instrument hung unused at his side in his clenched paw now; the cataclysm on display before him needed no magnification for its scope and scale to be plainly apparent.

The level of destruction increased threefold in the minutes that followed, as first the _Whaleslayer_ and then the _Stormbringer_ surrendered to the insatiable flames and ruptured with all the spectacle of the world's end, even as the ruined _Thunderchild_ between them slipped beneath the wavetops with a prolonged hiss and a wide plume of steam.

There were hundreds of searats in the water now, many of them mere lifeless corpses blown overboard by the various explosions, but a good many more floundered about in the sea after they'd jumped over the ships' railings to escape the raging fires. But many searats, in spite of spending their lives plying the waves, never learn to swim well, and before long dozens of the thrashing figures disappeared under the surface. Scores more were stunned by these mammoth explosions, drowning without ever regaining their senses. Even the strongest swimmers among them who avoided the worst of the blast forces found themselves too far from shore to do them much good. In the end, it was mainly those who found floating bits of debris to cling onto who survived the destruction of the three warships.

And Tratton, for all his unprecedented naval power, could do no more than stand by and watch as his battle fleet of four dreadnoughts was reduced to a single ship and a swarm of doomed castaways left to the mercy of the tides and the whim of the ocean currents.

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The captain of the _Whiteclaw_ didn't need to be told what to do. Once his three companion dreadnoughts had completely vanished beneath the waves, he knew it was time to cut and run. They'd come here to pummel Salamandastron into submission and take the mountain for their own. There was no way to accomplish this with just his one ship, even if he were to exhaust his entire supply of stormpowder and send every fighter rat he had to lay siege to the natural stronghold. That goal had been rendered impossible by Urthblood's unforeseen use of seagulls and their devastating tactics, and so the _Whiteclaw_'s sole purpose now became its very survival.

And that meant getting away from the merciless Badger Lord's wrath before they too were annihilated ... if they could.

The bombardment was halted even as scores of archers were sent aloft into the higher riggings to defend against the gulls; the tactic had not done the other dreadnoughts much good, but maybe the _Whiteclaw_ would have better luck in this regard, and besides, what other choice did they have? Hopefully, when Urthblood saw that they'd ceased their assault and were disengaging, he would not press the matter. Hopefully.

The sails were hastily lowered and furled as tightly as the deckpaws could manage, so as to expose the smallest possible area of canvas to the bombardier gulls. Fourscore rats took up oar handles down in the rowing galley and put their backs into their strokes; it would be oarpower, not windpower, which would deliver them from the teeth of this peril. Meanwhile, other crewrats hurried to carry all the unused stormpowder casks back below to the storerooms. If the gulls did succeed in starting any fires aboard the _Whiteclaw_, perhaps the flames could at least be kept away from the explosive dust, which might give the searats a hope of extinguishing the fires before they spread out of control. It would be more of a chance than their three sister ships had.

There was no question of turning straight out to sea, not with the wrecks of the three dreadnoughts lurking some unknown depth beneath the surface. The last thing the _Whiteclaw_'s captain and crew needed was to find themselves snagged on this new artificial reef. Since they were already pointed south, south they would go, hugging the coast until they were safely past the graveyard of their sister ships. Only then could they strike out for the sanctuary of the open ocean, beyond the reach of vengeful badgers and their fire-dropping seabirds. Now, if only Urthblood would be so kind as to cooperate.

For awhile it looked as if he was going to do just that. But, as the _Whiteclaw_ cleared the stretch where the other three dreadnoughts lay and turned her prow toward the wider main, the seagulls appeared once more from behind the plateau of Salamandastron in an attack flock a hundred strong, more of the accursed glass globes slung under their legs and ready for dropping upon their target.

This time, however, the searats were in for yet another grisly surprise. The gulls flew in lower than before, low enough that they could target individual rats and groups of rats clustered on the deck. Several of the birds paid the price for this boldness, tumbling out of the sky transfixed by searat arrows. But those gulls who made it through the fusillade of shafts unscathed delivered their weapons with deadly accuracy.

The expected flames never came. Where the glass spheres shattered, their sprayed fluid contents burned without fire, burned the flesh right off the bone and consumed everything else it touched. Rat archers fell screaming from the riggings upon their equally stricken shipmates below, clutching uselessly at smoldering patches of fur on their chests, backs, arms and legs. The ones hit full in the head and face were actually among the luckiest, since they died the quickest.

Somewhere amongst the frantic throngs clogging the main deck, the captain of the _Whiteclaw_ fell, never to rise again, a fist-sized dollop of the vitriol eating a large hole in the back of his skull.

The gulls dropped a much greater quantity of the corrosive fluid onto the _Whiteclaw_ than they had on the _Sharktail_ the previous winter, when over half the winged warriors had carried flammable oil instead of vitriol. This was by far the better opportunity for the use of the caustic solution, since the entire crew of the _Whiteclaw_ was still on board the warship and a large portion of them were abovedecks, standing ready to battle the gulls and the anticipated fires. The topside of the dreadnought had been crowded with searats, and among that concentration of tightly-packed bodies the vitriol now took a terrible toll. Over a hundred rats were killed, blinded or maimed by direct exposure to the vitriol, but the damage didn't stop there. The thorough dousing of the decks sent up a pall of choking, eye-burning, lung-searing vapors from stem to stern. It didn't matter whether the deadly liquid worked its damage on rats or inanimate objects, the fumes were just as poisonous either way.

While a few of the uninjured crewrats who found themselves trapped topside with no way belowdecks opted to jump overboard and take their chances in the sea, most of the survivors flooded down hatches and doorways to escape the horrors all around them. With their captain and several other officers dead or incapacitated, nobeast of rank remained to restore any kind of order to the panicked seavermin.

The castaways from the other three dreadnoughts, bobbing on the wave swells as they clung to their makeshift lifesavers or simply tread water to stay afloat, watched those proceedings with growing despair. The _Whiteclaw_ was the only hope of salvation for most of them. No flames could be seen ravaging this last remaining warship, but clearly the gulls had attacked it in some manner, and something aboard it was very, very wrong, to judge by the rats falling from the riggings, dropping from their footpaws on deck, or casting themselves over the side into the sea as the growing cloud of evil-looking steam coalesced over the doomed vessel.

For the moment, however, the _Whiteclaw_ pushed on. The vitriol attack had not reached the rowing galley, and the oarsrats down there still thought their best chance was to put as much distance between themselves and Salamandastron as quickly as they could. For a craft so large as this, their muscles could only propel the ship a fraction as fast as they could have gone under full sail, but this would have to suffice.

Not a single rat noticed the twoscore brawny yet sleek shapes that emerged from the mountain's main gate and hastened to the tideline, where they promptly dove into the surf. The searats remained unaware of the heavily-armed water warriors stroking toward the _Whiteclaw_ like fleet shadows of death.

And away on the hidden east slopes of the fortress, Urthblood prepared his gulls for their next wave, during which they would unleash yet another surprise upon Tratton's rapidly-disintegrating force.

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The Searat King monitored the _Whiteclaw_'s difficulties through his second long glass, almost wishing he'd not had a spare telescope after all.

Tratton could see the thick vapors rising from the deck and the stricken crewrats. Urthblood's gulls had delivered weapons of some kind to the last remaining dreadnought, but not the same type that had destroyed the other three warships. No flames met his eye, just that not-quite-white smoke that steamed up from wherever the glass bombs had burst. But, to judge from how quickly the archers and deckpaws up in the riggings had fallen from their perches after just glancing contact with the spilled contents of the ruptured globes, it must have been potent stuff indeed.

The spyglass slowly lowered as Tratton's mind travelled back in time to an episode which had taken place seasons before, when he was still new upon the throne of Terramort. It had been his first skirmish with Urthblood's forces, after he'd played that badger to help clear the way for him to become ruler of all the searats. (Or had Urthblood been playing him?) Tratton had sent agents deep into the mainland, from the Northlands to Southsward, probing to see where the woodlanders were weakest. A team of his spies encountered a pine marten recluse who held the secret of how to distill an evil fluid that could eat through almost anything in the blink of an eye and consume living flesh at a hellish rate. The searats kidnapped the alchemist with the intention of delivering him to Terramort so he could produce the corrosive substance for Tratton to use as a weapon. Unfortunately, Urthblood was in the vicinity at the time, and liberated the marten before he could be put aboard the waiting _Whiteclaw_. Only one of the searat agents escaped from that incident with his life, otherwise Tratton might never have learned of these events at all.

Ever since, he'd wondered whether Urthblood might have found a way to use the marten's invention as a weapon himself. That question was now answered; what Tratton saw being used against the _Whiteclaw_ could only be this deadly fluid that had been described to him seasons ago. He should have known Urthblood would not miss the opportunity to add such a lethal element to his own arsenal. Certainly that pine marten must have felt so indebted to Urthblood for his rescue that he would have done anything that badger had asked.

Tratton fought the impulse to smash his second telescope against the steel railing. Until he'd taken to sea in the _Wedge_ for this battle mission, the _Whiteclaw_ had always been his flagship - the first of the dreadnoughts built, and the one that had later been refitted with Imperial quarters where he and his queen would stay whenever they experienced the need or desire to leave Terramort. Of all the vessels in his fleet, this was the one to which he felt the greatest attachment, even if the Wedge and his other steel ships may have been more intricate and innovative in design. To see her in such distress twisted something inside him as the destruction of the other warships had not.

Not that he could even think of letting those around him see his sense of loss. For them, his inner rage would be quite enough to reveal. And so his underlings trembled in apprehensive fear as Tratton stood helplessly by, beholding the full depths of his defeat.

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The brilliant morning sun lit the waters off Salamandastron down to a depth of many otterlengths. Saybrook led his squad just below the surface out into the heart of the recent naval disaster.

The lithe otters, born to the ways of the water, easily avoided the masses of living and dead searats choking the sea where the three dreadnoughts had gone down, swimming either around or under them. The sunken vessels themselves, however, required a good deal more skill and care to navigate.

The slanting, dancing shafts of sunlight illuminated the ocean murk just enough for the ruined titans to loom up out of their watery graves at the otters like immense phantoms rising from the sea bed. No part of the swamped ships stuck up above the wavetops, but enough of the masts had survived the fires and explosions that they now reached up like an eerie undersea forest, nearly brushing the surface in a few spots. It was through this newly-created graveyard that Saybrook's team had to swim now to pursue the fleeing _Whiteclaw_.

If the surviving searat castaways noticed the otters swimming through the waters beneath them at all, they were in no position to do anything about it. Indeed, it would have been incredibly easy for the waterbeasts to come up under the floundering rats and physically pull them off their makeshift lifebuoys or drag them below the surface. But this was not their mission. If any of these searats succeeded in reaching the shore, over two hundred Gawtrybe waited there to deal with them. Saybrook's fight lay elsewhere ... although, hopefully, it would not be much of a fight at all.

Saybrook and his companions had all they could do to keep from gasping in awe at the ghostly submarine vista of still-settling shipwrecks ... not to mention avoiding the hazard they represented. The masts and crossbeams clawed at the gloom like spread talons, arrayed across the otters' path like a seine from Hellsgates, while severed and disconnected rope lines played out open-ended upon the undersea currents like myriad fibrous serpents. Many other pieces of debris hung suspended in the water here as well, floating not just on the surface but at every level, providing a multilayered field of slow-moving obstacles the otters had to dodge. It would be a hazardous region to traverse, and require extreme care.

The otter captain surfaced for air, making sure no living searats drifted anywhere nearby. Saybrook's longtime cohort Tulia came up beside him, along with several others. "Hey, Cap'n, are ye shore we hafta swim through this mess? Can't we go 'round it instead?"

"Shortest distance 'tween two points, Tully. An' one o' those points is gettin' further from shore as we speak. If we wanna have any hope o' catchin' that last dreadnought, we gotta make straight for her, with all th' speed our rudders can muster!"

Tulia threw a glance at the departing _Whiteclaw_. "If'n ye ask me, I don't wager we're gonna catch 'er anyways. Lookit how far out she is already! An' still under full oarspeed, by th' look of it ... "

"Fer now, mebbe," Saybrook conceded. "But if our gull allies can slow 'em down like Lord Urthblood wants, we gotta be on paw t' take advantage of it, elsewise this long swim out here's all fer naught!"

As if to accentuate his point, the dense flock of attack gulls winged by overhead, flapping their way out toward the _Whiteclaw_, this time for an attack of a very different nature. Klystra and the owl Saugus, filling in for the injured Altidor, flew at the head of the formation, Urthblood's on-scene commanders for this particular mission.

"See, there they are now!" Saybrook pointed. "Awright, everybeast, back on our way now! But mind all that searat bric-a-brac we gotta contend with! Don't wanna lose any otter here t' barrels or bowsprits 'fore we even make it to th' fight!"

All the otters inhaled deeply and dove back beneath the waves once more, tails and hind legs arching gracefully after them. Moments later it was as if they'd never been there, and the stranded searats had the ocean all to themselves again.

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The few searats aboard the _Whiteclaw_ daring enough to poke their heads abovedecks in the wake of the vitriol attack quickly ducked back down again when they spotted the next wave of birds approaching. Klystra, Saugus and the gulls met no resistance whatsoever as they settled down onto the corpse-strewn deck.

"Watch your step!" the owl reminded his fellow avians. "Some spilled vitriol may still be active, and could burn your talons!"

Roughly half their force of nearly a hundred gulls remained airborne, circling and wheeling above the bare masts. Many of them dangled maces, war hammers and other heavy weapons below them, ready to swoop down and wreak havoc should masses of rats pour out of the hatches to challenge their winged boarders. This was to be a very different engagement from any which had taken place thus far that morning.

The attackers carried no glass globes this time, no vitriol to burn the flesh or flammable oil to douse the decks and riggings or lit lamps to ignite such a conflagration as had doomed the other dreadnoughts. No, their main weapon against the searat might would be their sharp, stabbing beaks ... along with fourteen clay jars shaped liked squat, oversized hourglasses. This was the total remaining supply of Urthblood's Flitchaye gas at Salamandastron, and his commitment of that resource to this endeavor gave testimony to just how badly he wanted the _Whiteclaw_.

Klystra, Saugus and a few of the bigger, stronger gulls set to work with the other weapons they'd carried out here: long, heavy prybars. These tools were awkward for the seabirds to wield with their webbed feet, so they mostly just lent their bulk to the levering process, leaving the more precise manipulation of the crowbars to the owl and falcon.

Working thus, they soon forced open a number of doors and hatches, sometimes ripping the hinges right out of the woodwork. And through every newly-opened portal they cast one or two of the Flitchaye gas vessels, making sure to hurl the fragile containers against walls, floor or stairs with sufficient force to ensure their breakage. They couldn't know whether the gas would penetrate down to the lower levels, but they followed their badger master's instructions as best as they were able.

Often the forced doors revealed armed guardrats standing just on the other side, intent upon keeping the marauding birds from gaining entry belowdecks. Any who grew too bold were clobbered by Klystra and Saugus's prybars, or driven back by the thrusting bills of the aggressive gulls. Only once did any sizable force of searats spill out onto the topdeck in a concerted attempt to drive the raiders from the dreadnought altogether. Saugus and Klystra grabbed up spears dropped by the previously slain rats, then joined their fellow boarders in scattering to the sides while the airborne element of their party came screaming out of the sky to do their worst. When heavy spiked iron balls impaled searat skulls, barbed chains ripped flesh from bone, flying hammers smashed ribcages and swinging axes found their mark, the audacious seavermin were convinced to beat a hasty retreat.

At last Urthblood's birds had the deck all to themselves once more, and all the Flitchaye gas was deployed. White vapors began to waft up through the open hatches and doorways, and the winged creatures fell back to keep from being overwhelmed themselves. Some retreated to the high riggings while others took to the air and stayed there, circling the besieged ship to see what would come of their efforts.

The effects of their unorthodox attack quickly became apparent. The stroking oars propelling the dreadnought on either side soon began to falter and grow erratic in their rhythm, the broad blades loudly clacking against each other as the rowers fell out of timing with their companions. The _Whiteclaw_ began to resemble some vast surface-crawling centipede of the sea which had had too much to drink and could no longer coordinate its forty legs to carry it where it wanted to go. Clearly the oarsrats were being affected by the Flitchaye gas, but it was too soon to tell whether they would merely sputter and choke, teary-eyed, or be rendered totally unconscious as hoped.

Suddenly, the _Whiteclaw_ began to veer off course, turning to starboard as if she meant to parallel the shoreline. The situation became even stranger when she continued her slow turn until she was pointed toward land again. Even then she did not straighten, her prow coming about to the south. The gulls in the riggings and soaring about the dreadnought started to caw with laughter as they realized what was happening: the searat rowers on the _Whiteclaw_'s port side had been affected by the gas to a much greater degree than their starboard counterparts, and as a result their lopsided labors were merely turning the ship in a huge circle. And with norat topside to pilot the vessel or take the rudder, they didn't even realize it!

Soon, however, the starboard rats faltered too, the long oars that protruded from that side of the warship stirring into a spastic and useless confusion. The Flitchaye gas had done its job. The _Whiteclaw_ quickly lay dead in the water.

And so had the warriorbirds. Saugus turned to Klystra, sitting across the crow's nest from him, and said, "Hope it takes Saybrook a little time to get here - I can sure use a bit of a rest after all that!"

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The otters in question were about to run into another obstacle they'd not foreseen ... although perhaps they should have.

Saybrook's squad had cleared the sunken dreadnoughts when before them a distressingly familiar shape materialized out of the ocean shadows. Fortunately, the sunlit waters allowed the aquatic warriors to see their tubby armored nemesis before it was right on top of them. Every otter among them remembered the deadly submersible from their previous encounter during the battle with the _Sharktail_. Their captain flashed a paw signal for all of them to meet up on the surface.

"Pfaw!" Tulia sputtered. "That waterlogged thing again? You mean it's been floatin' 'round out here all this time, since winter?"

"Doubt it, Tully," Saybrook said. "This might not even be th' same one. Remember, there were four dreadnoughts out here - each one of 'em coulda been carryin' one o' these perilous pincushions, so be on the alert 'cos that one up ahead might not be alone."

"That's a cheery thought," one of the other otters muttered.

"How'd it survive those explosions, is what I wanna know," said Tulia.

"It's made o' steel," Saybrook reminded them. "Those rats inside might've gotten slammed 'round within it, but that craft itself can take a beatin', you can be shore o' that. But what's important now's that those things ain't too swift, meanin' we can just swim around 'em, an' they're no threat at all t' Salamandastron, which means we can ignore 'em once we're safely past. We got bigger fish t' fry. Right now these tinbuckets've got no ships left t' protect an' nowhere t' go, so let's all give 'em a big wave an' a smile as we swim by an' leave 'em lost at sea!"

"What if there's another one out under th' ship we're gonna board?"

Saybrook studied the distant _Whiteclaw_, which at this time had not yet begun its crazy slow turning to its eventual stop. "Doubt it. That vessel's movin' too fast fer one o' these fat liddle patrollers t' keep up. If they had one, it's either still aboard or loiterin' 'round here somewhere."

"Looks like Saugus and Klystra's gulls are givin' those shiprats a good fight," Tulia observed. "Hope that plan with the sleepystuff pans out like Lord Urthblood intended, otherwise we won't catch up to that boat 'til it's halfway back t' Terramort!"

"Then we'd better get swimmin'!" encouraged Saybrook. "We don't want those featherbags hoggin' all th' glory, do we? Watch out fer them murderous little tubs, an' strike out straight fer that last dreadnought - we got a ship t' catch!"


	8. Chapter 59

Chapter Fifty-Nine

When the otter assault team next surfaced for air, the _Whiteclaw_ was already into the first of her wayward, directionless turns, coming about to the north instead of straight out to sea. This wasn't entirely surprising, since Tratton's stronghold of Terramort lay to the northwest of Salamandastron. But upon the otters' subsequent surfacing, they found the dreadnought pointed back at shore, sailing right toward Saybrook's team. The armed waterbeasts had made it past the steel defender submarines without any problem (a second had been spotted and avoided as well), but this unexpected sight made them stop and stare. For long moments the otter squad simply tread water, bobbing on the gentle wave swells while they took stock of this latest development.

It was their captain who first figured out what was happening. "Look at their oars!" Saybrook exhorted; the _Whiteclaw_ faced them head-on now, if still at a considerable distance, giving them a clear view of the long paddles on both sides of the ship. "The ones t' port are just droopin' there idle, while th' starboard ones're still stroking fer all they're worth! Haw! They're rowin' themselves 'round in circles an' they don't even know it!"

"Guess that Flitchaye gas did th' trick," Tulia said. "Didn't know if it would, consid'rin' that was less'n half what we used t' put th' Long Patrol asleep last summer ... "

"Aw, that ship there may be big, Tully, but you could fit a whole bunch of 'em inside Salamandastron. Ain't no comparin' the two ... "

"Mebbe," she conceded, "but I was figgerin' that it might not seep down through th' decks like we was hopin'. Looks like I was worried 'bout nothin', glad t' say ... "

"Too early t' say that just yet," said Saybrook. "Half that rowin' crew's still goin' strong, an' the other half could revive any moment ... or else their crew chief might figger out what's up, an' split his rats who're still awake 'tween the two sides. But this has already bought us th' slowdown we needed. Should be no problem catchin' up to that ship now! Otters, move out! Forward ... swim!"

The news became even more encouraging at their next surfacing. Not only had the _Whiteclaw_ come about so that she was aimed south, but she appeared to have lost all forward momentum. The starboard side of the vessel was now hidden to the otters' view, but it seemed the rowers there must have stilled their oars as well.

"Reckon th' whole rowin' galley's fallen asleep?" Tulia wondered.

"Either that, or they're redistributin' their rowers 'tween port 'n' starboard like I thought they might," said Saybrook.

"Think they may've spotted us, an' now they're puttin' aside their oars t' take up weapons 'gainst us?" one of the other otters supposed.

Saybrook shook his head. "We're still far 'nuff away that they'd prob'ly hafta be up in their riggin's t' see us, an' our birds've got those masts to themselves. But we all knew there might be a fight waitin' fer us at the end o' this swim. We've got Saugus an' Klystra an' their gulls t' help us with any battlin' that takes place topside - at th' very least, they should be able t' keep th' decks clear 'til we can board - but it'll be up to us t' take belowdecks. Lord Urthblood wants that dreadnought - so let's go get it for him!"

It took three more surfacings - as convenient a measure as any for marking ocean distances as far as the otters were concerned - before they reached the becalmed warship. The gulls made sure to trail plenty of lines and nets over the port side so that Saybrook's squad could swarm up onto the _Whiteclaw_ en masse. He assigned three of his otters to the wheeldeck to help the birds secure the top of the vessel. Then, filter masks firmly in place to protect them against the lingering vestiges of the Flitchaye gas, Saybrook led the rest of his fighters belowdecks to see what awaited them there. The sight of so many searat corpses as a result of the vitriol attack encouraged them, but they knew a vessel this size could carry four hundred rats or more, and that meant the majority might still be lurking below. The otters proceeded tensed for battle, many brandishing a weapon in each paw, ready to face any odds.

The final battle of the day was about to commence ... but it would end in a way that nobeast at Salamandastron or aboard the _Whiteclaw_ would have imagined.

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Through his long glass's circular magnified field of vision, Tratton had a clear view of what was happening aboard the _Whiteclaw_ ... and the Searat King was not pleased.

It was bad enough that the globe-dropping seagulls had chased his rats belowdecks, and worse still that those birds had returned to take up positions in the riggings and masts as if they owned the vessel ... after forcing some concoction down the hatchways that made the _Whiteclaw_'s oarsrats start rowing the warship in circles, and then stop altogether. But now otters were climbing up out of the water onto the flagship and running around the top deck without anyrat to stop them. Tratton knew those waterdogs were among Urthblood's most formidable fighters ... and if they were boarding that dreadnought, it wasn't just to pay a visit.

Tratton brought down the spyglass as he considered what must be done now. "Otters ... " he muttered, more to himself than for the sake of appraising his underlings of the situation. "Urthblood has sent out his otters. He means to capture the _Whiteclaw_."

"Impossible, Sire!" Tanzillo burst out. "There are over four hundred rats on that ship!"

"And a quarter of them seem to have been slain in the gulls' first wave!" Tratton exploded. "You think they'd be sitting dead in the water like that by choice? No, Urthblood's fed 'em something that's thrown the crew into a stupor - and if they can't row, they won't be much good at fighting either. Those otters will take the _Whiteclaw_ away from them before they even know what's happening!"

"Then, wouldn't it be best fer us t' clear outta here with all haste, Yer Majesty? Them gulls surely must've seen us, an' if Urthblood decides t' send 'em after us too ... "

"We can't let that badger capture a dreadnought," Tratton stated with finality. "Not only might that allow him the chance to analyze the stormpowder and learn how to make it for himself, but he could crew that ship with his woodlanders and send it out to challenge us on our own seas! With a ship like that and those gulls to serve as long-range scouts and provide air cover in naval engagements, he could wreak utter havoc upon our remaining fleet!"

"But, what can we do about it, M' Lord?" Tanzillo spread his paws. "There's barely fifty of us aboard th' _Wedge_ - we'd not a hope o' recapturin' th' _Whiteclaw_ back from Urthblood's forces!"

"No, there's no chance of us taking her back now," Tratton agreed. "But if we can't have it, then we can at least keep Urthblood from getting his bloody claws on it!" He glared at the besieged warship floating on the waters before them; the _Whiteclaw_ had come to rest with her prow aimed southward and her long starboard side facing the smaller armored vessel head-on. "Captain, put every rat on the propulsion shaft cranks and the oars that you can - I want all the speed we can muster! Aim us straight at the _Whiteclaw_, amidships. We're going to ram her and sink her!"

Tanzillo stood aghast. "Majesty, that would wreck us both!"

"I have been assured by the designer of this craft that the _Wedge_ was built specifically to withstand such a collision, Captain. Now, you have your orders ... "

"But, Yer Majesty! All those rats who're still - aargh!"

Normally Tratton would have signaled one of his personal guard to dispatch an uncooperative officer, but this was a crisis situation, and the fury which filled the Searat King demanded immediate and personal satisfaction. Tratton had his dagger drawn and was lunging before the captain of the ironclad even realized it. Tanzillo, being an officer, was no slouch as a soldier ... but neither he was any match for his liege. Tratton dodged around Tanzillo's upraised paws as if the lesser rat was moving in slow motion and plunged his blade up to its hilt in the captain's throat.

Tanzillo was still gurgling in shocked surprise as Tratton seized him by the legs and upended him over the railing, spilling him into the sea with the dagger still lodged in his windpipe.

Tratton spun upon the remaining rats present. "I'm taking direct command of the _Wedge_!" he snarled. "Now get us moving toward the _Whiteclaw_ with all speed! I want to smash a hole in her midsection so deep and wide that it'll gulp in half the sea!"

After the display of unrestrained wrath they'd just witnessed, Tratton's shipmates needed no further encouragement. Instantly the cold-blooded order was relayed down to the rowing galley and crankshaft room, and within moments over a dozen brawny rats were turning the propulsion handles for all they were worth while another score bent their backs over their oars. The pilot Grong aligned the rudders to direct the armored vessel straight at the _Whiteclaw_. The ironclad's main locomotive system - a network of gears and rods and pulleys of unprecedented sophistication and complexity - converted the labors of the dozen-odd crankrats into the equivalent of a hundred ordinary rowers, and with the output of the oarsrats added to that, the _Wedge_ soon skimmed along, half-raised out of the water, as fast as any sloop driven by the swiftest sea winds ever was ... making like a flying fish for a target that was simply too big to miss.

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Captain Saybrook found himself faced with a whale of a dilemma.

He and his otters encountered little resistance as they picked their way through the _Whiteclaw_. The Flitchaye gas had thoroughly permeated the lower levels, its lingering essence stinging their eyes. The searats, however, were faring far worse than that; the few still coherent enough to stand against the otters nevertheless suffered watery eyes, coughing and choking fits and dizziness that made them unsteady on their feet and uncertain with their blades. Any rat in this state who raised a weapon against Saybrook's squad - and there ended up being dozens foolish enough to try - was quickly slain before they had a chance to draw a single drop of their enemy's blood.

The problem was what to do with the rest of the searats aboard the pacified warship. The vast majority of the rats turned out to be either completely unconscious or else so incapacitated by the gas that they were in no condition to put up a fight. Saybrook announced loudly and clearly as he made his way along the passages that this vessel had been captured by Lord Urthblood and was now the property of that badger warrior, and any rats who did not wish to be slain outright were to surrender and give up their weapons. This in itself posed a problem, since nearly all of Tratton's personnel carried at least two blades apiece, in addition to the occasional longbow, crossbow and other odd weapon. In the end, several of the otters had to scrounge up some large canvas sacks in which to safely deposit all the confiscated arms taken from the slain and surrendered foebeasts.

Even taking these measures, Saybrook and his companions knew their situation was precarious. They were fewer than twoscore otters down amongst hundreds of searat fighters in an unfamiliar ship of considerable size. If those comatose rats should start waking up all at once, the woodlander invaders would have all they could do to battle their way back topside to escape the masses of wrathful rodents alive. That would put the lower half of the dreadnought - including the rowing galley and armories - back under Tratton's control, and with no more Flitchaye gas to subdue them a second time.

But what other options did Saybrook have? If he had his crew stop to chain or tie up every unconscious rat they encountered, it would take their small team forever to secure the ship ... and even then they couldn't spare the otters to guard the prisoners, which meant that the captives' fellow rats might be able to just sneak around behind the otters to free the seavermin from their restraints. And that would put Urthblood's expeditionary force right back where they started.

The only other alternative would be to simply slay every searat in sight, awake or asleep, able-bodied or incapacitated, and this Saybrook simply was not prepared to do. It was one thing to take the life of an armed adversary in the heat of battle, and quite another to engage in the wholesale slaughter of beasts incapable of lifting a paw to defend themselves. Lord Urthblood had ordered them to capture this vessel, and Saybrook would do what he must to carry out those orders - within reason. Cold-blooded murder on that scale was not in his warrior's repertoire.

Little did Saybrook know, Tratton himself would soon solve this dilemma for him, sparing the otter from such hard decisions.

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The gulls circling high above the _Whiteclaw_ were the first to notice the smaller armored craft bearing down upon the commandeered dreadnought. Scarbatta, the captain of the seabirds, took the measure of the situation, took it again just to make sure, then flapped down to the crow's nest where Saugus and Klystra perched as they monitored the _Whiteclaw_'s decks. If he read this right, Scarbatta knew, this battle was about to take a most unexpected turn ...

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Rosbor was the otter nominally in charge of the trio Saybrook had assigned to watch over the pilot's station. The senior otter's brow and muzzle furrowed now as he regarded the distant ironclad. "Looks like they're comin' this way. Reckon they're gonna launch a counterattack, try 'n' take back this dreadnought?"

Kortzo, a young scrapper from Captain Riveroll's late command, said, "I thought that craft t'was only s'posed to be a small one?"

"Mebbe," Rosbor stroked his long whiskers. "Then again, if most of it's under th' waves, could be it's big 'nuff t' carry as many fighters as this monster we're standin' 'pon."

Kortzo scoffed. "T'wouldn't be possible t' make a ship of iron that big! It'd sink under its own weight!"

"Shouldn't be possible t' make _any_ iron boat that doesn't sink, but we've seen Tratton's done it," Rosbor challenged. "Can't help but wonder what else he might've been able t' pull off that we ain't seen yet."

"Does it really matter how many rats that craft can hold?" asked Shogger, the third member of their team. "They'll still only be able t' board a few at a time, at most. Our gull force should be more'n adequate t' frustrate 'em at doin' that."

"Then we'll leave it in their capable, uh, wings." Rosbor glanced up at the main mast. "Matter o' fact, looks like their chief's up there consultin' with Saugus an' Klystra 'bout that right now."

"Reckon one of us oughtta go down an' inform Cap'n Saybrook we got company comin'?" asked Shogger.

Rosbor shook his head. "Naw, he's gotta have his paws full 'nuff down there as it is. No need distractin' him with something we can handle ourselves."

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When Saybrook reached the rowing galley and beheld the fourscore rats laid out senseless there, an idea struck him. His otter squad had by that time come across considerable stockpiles of rope, and Saybrook ordered some of it put to use now.

The otters were old paws at working with rope, experienced in the ways of knots and able to tie a variety of such configurations with their eyes closed. In no time at all they had every one of those eighty oarsrats tied securely to the heavy oar handles, their confining knots tight enough to leave them no hope of working themselves free. Some of them were starting to stir groggily near the end of this endeavor, but too late for their sluggishly-returning awareness to do them any good.

"Now _there's_ a sight t' do an honest soul's heart good!" Saybrook declared as he stood back to take stock of their efforts. "All those times these scurvy seascum kept pore decent creatures enslaved in filthy places like this, chained to their oars fer all their short, miserable lives ... time fer a little payback, me hearties!"

"Aye," Tulia concurred, "that's some poetic justice sweet as any these eyes've ever seen!"

Saybrook assigned two pairs of otters to stand guard at either end of the rowing galley, then led the rest of his squad forward to continue their exploration of the captured vessel.

"Well, at least that's eighty rats we won't hafta worry 'bout fightin' if it comes to a fight," the otter captain mused aloud. "We've slain a score or two, taken all th' weapons off them an' th' rest who've surrendered, an' now we got that gang back there tied to their oars. We might just pull this off yet!"

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"Hey, what're them featherbags gettin' all excited 'bout?" Rosbor wondered, gazing up from the wheeldeck at the circling flock of madly-cawing gulls.

The three topside otters had been keeping their vigilant gazes upon the approaching ironclad. The _Wedge_ was clearly visible to them now even down here on the deck, raising an unmistakable bow wave before her as her arrowhead-shaped steel hull plowed through the water. Rosbor and his companions could tell that the strange craft's speed must be considerable, but even so they were seriously underestimating her velocity ... and as for Tratton's true intentions, that would never have occurred to the otters in a million seasons. They were concerned only with the fighters this new vessel might disgorge, and the trouble those soldierrats might cause.

To the birds high above, however, a clearer picture was visible. Looking straight down upon the scene from their lofty vantage, they could get a truer sense of just how fast the armored ship was going, and where her trajectory would carry her. It was this that had convinced Scarbatta to convey his concerns to Klystra and Saugus; the three birds consulted still around the crow's nest.

Rosbor shrugged off the excited seagulls, returning his attention to the incoming vessel, for it was surely from there that any threat would come.

"They're comin' in awful fast," Shogger observed.

"Prob'ly th' best stab they can make at a sneak attack," guessed Rosbor. "Put their rustbucket under all th' speed they can muster, an' hope it's enuff t' catch us by surprise ... "

"Surprise?" Kortzo laughed. "Harr, that's a good 'un! Them scumtails must not realize how much o' their iron monstrosity's showin' above th' wavetops!"

"Even so," Rosbor cautioned, "look for 'em to come sweepin' up 'gainst our starboard flank, an' start spittin' out their fighters 'fore they even come fully t' rest. If they mean t' take this dreadnought back from us, they'll throw ev'rything they've got at us, all at once. I just hope our gull friends can deal with whatever Tratton's got in mind."

"It shore seems to have 'em in enuff of a fuss," Kortzo said, jerking a paw-thumb upwards. "Guess mebbe they're in a tizzy 'cos they ain't never seen any bucket o' bolts like that before. I know I shore ain't, so I kinda know how they feel ... "

None of the otters had a long glass, but the _Wedge_ was so close by this time that such an instrument would have benefited them little. After all, the only thing visible of the ironclad were undecorated planes and lines of steel. Then again, that lack of any detail or activity was itself noteworthy.

"They got their deck clear," Shogger remarked. "Guess they wanna keep all their fighters inside th' protection of that steel shell 'til they're ready t' board us."

"Makes sense," said Rosbor, "tho' it would slow 'em up in any attack they're plannin. If they mean t' hit us quick, you'd think they'd have all their fighters standin' at th' ready topside, t' swarm aboard soon as they nudge up 'gainst us. Unless ... unless they got some other way o' gettin' on board from underneath th' hull ... "

"Our gulls couldn't very well fight 'gainst _that_," Shogger said, worried. "Mebbe we oughtta go tell th' Cap'n ... "

"Let's wait 'n' see what they do," Rosbor repsonded after a moment's consideration. "If they start circling 'round like they're lookin' fer a way in, or make any move t' go under us, we'll let Cap'n Saybrook know right quick. Otherwise, we'll hold this wheeldeck like we was told to."

"Hey!" Kortzo burst out, struck by a sudden inspiration. "Didn't Lord Urthblood say Tratton 'imself is on that boat that's comin' our way? What say we see if we can't capture or slay King Nastywhiskers ourselves? It'd be instant, on-th'-spot promotions fer all three o' us, on that you could bet yore rudders!"

"Don't go jumpin' th' gunwale, Kort matey," Rosbor warned. "Let's see what they got in mind first, an' then - "

Rosbor was interrupted by Saugus and the gull captain Scarbatta, who landed roughly on the wheeldeck before them. "You've got to evacuate, at once!" the owl said.

The urgency in Saugus's voice made all three otters straighten to attention. "Whaddya mean, evacuate?" Rosbor asked.

"That smaller craft - " Saugus nodded toward the _Wedge_, " - is coming at us too fast."

"Aye, we can see that," Kortzo said with a trace of arrogance. "We ain't blind down here, y' know. Let 'em come fast as they want - won't do 'em much good."

Saugus ruffled his plumage in indignation. "It won't do _us_ much good either, young whelp, when they hit us."

"Hit us?" Rosbor echoed, still not comprehending the full depth of what Saugus was trying to tell them.

The owl turned to Rosbor. "According to Captain Scarbatta, that craft has been picking up speed almost its entire way here. It's a stout and heavy vessel, and can't be very maneuverable. It certainly won't be able to stop in time to avoid a collision, and probably couldn't turn aside either. And I don't think the commander of that ship ever had any intention of either stopping or turning. They mean to ram us, with all the force they can."

The otters stood flabbergasted, and at least one of them refused to credit the owl's analysis of the situation. "They'd be mad t' try such a thing!" Kortzo protested.

"Mad or not," Saugus said, "a pointed steel prow like that hitting a wood vessel like this broadside and full-force ... I'd say that might just about split us in two."

"But, there's hunnerds of 'is own rats down below!" Rosbor sputtered. "Tratton would be condemnin' 'em all t' death!"

"It seems that is a sacrifice he is willing to make. Now, if you don't want your fellow otters to end up trapped aboard a sinking ship, you'd best go find your crewmates and tell them to withdraw at once. It may already be too late, but if you act quickly, you still might be able to get them all out. We'll wait up here, to help out however we may. Good luck to you, friends." Saugus took to the wing, returning to his perch by the crow's nest alongside Klystra.

For several heartbeats, the three otters just stood staring at each other. Then Rosbor shouted, "Well, what're we just standin' 'round fer? Let's get our mateys outta this! Kort, you take th' for'ard hatchways, Shoggs, you find a way down amidships, an' I'll head down right 'ere. Tell ev'ry otter you see t' haul their rudders topside! We gotta abandon ship!"

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Many of the disarmed searats, still disoriented from the effects of the Flitchaye gas, milled aimlessly around the lower companionways, trying to figure out for themselves and from each other exactly what had happened. They knew otters had swept through here, confiscating their weapons and slaying anyrat who resisted; the corpses of those brave and foolish defenders that lay about the floors and slumped lifelessly against the walls bore mute testimony to the skill of Urthblood's fighters. And since they'd all been deprived of their arms and had no idea whether their otter foe numbered two dozen, twoscore or two hundred, the survivors were in no hurry to try their luck against the invaders a second time.

Thus, norat lifted paw or claw to waylay Rosbor as that solitary otter came pounding down the stairs and passageways, yelling at the top of his lungs to anybeast who would listen, "Abandon ship! Abandon ship!"

One burly junior rat officer found within himself the temerity to momentarily halt the running otter with an upheld paw. "Hey, whaddya mean, 'abandon ship?' You mean alla us, or just you otters?"

"I mean ev'ry beast with a pair o' ears an' a speck o' brains in between 'em! Yore king's about t' stave in th' side o' this dreadnought with that iron terror o' his! Guess he'd rather sink 'er than let Lord Urthblood 'ave her."

"No!" The rat officer's bloodshot eyes went wide. "King Tratton'd never do such a thing!"

"Then I guess you don't know yore ruler well as y' think!" Rosbor roughly knocked aside the rat's arm. "Feel free to loiter 'round here an' drink seawater if you don't wanna berlieve me, but if you an' yore mates've got a scrap o' sense between you, you'll get topside quick as y' can! Nobeast or bird'll stop you." Not waiting to argue the point further, he hurried past the befuddled seavermin to find his fellow otters.

His confused underlings all looked to the officer for guidance. "Whadda we do now, sir?"

"We go topside, o' course! If that waterdog wasn't lyin', this place'll be full o' th' sea any moment! Run fer yer lives, mateys!"


	9. Chapter 60

Chapter Sixty

Tratton's dreadnoughts were the largest warships ever to ply the seas. They had to be, to carry four catapults apiece and have room for the steel submersible defender pods to dock in their specially modified stern ports. The _Whiteclaw_, being the first of her class, did not feature a pod bay, but still floated a waterborne army of four hundred crew and soldier rats, meaning it had to possess the quartering space and provision stores to sleep and feed such a number for upwards of a season at a time. Then there was the rowing galley, onboard workshops, armories for conventional weapons and magazines for the stormpowder, and the spacious royal accommodations where Tratton and Queen Regelline stayed when they went to sea aboard the _Whiteclaw_.

This wealth of interior space worked against the otters now - both Saybrook's main squad, who were still preoccupied with trying to secure and pacify the large numbers of searats scattered throughout the vessel's labyrinthine vastness, and the trio who sought out their comrades to raise the evacuation alarm. And so it was that, as the _Wedge_'s demolishing leading edge made contact with the _Whiteclaw_'s starboard side just below the middle of the rowing galley, Rosbor, Shogger and Kortzo had succeeded in spreading their warning to nobeast but their rat foes.

Shogger stumbled upon Saybrook's group, more by accident than anything, just forward of the rowing galley. "Cap'n, sir, we gotta get outta here! Tratton's gonna sink us!"

"Sink us? What are you - "

Saybrook's incredulous response was cut short by a low, bone-jarring thud, followed by the strained creaking and cracking of snapping timbers. It was a modest noise in comparison to the all-night barrage the otters had endured as they'd bobbed in the surf off Salamandastron, but within the restrictive confines of the warship's lower decks it was all the more terrifying. The floor pitched to the port side beneath their feet, throwing several of the less surefooted otters into the wall or down onto their rudders.

The otter captain took Shogger by the shoulder. "What's goin' on?"

"Tratton's rammed that infernal iron boat o' his inta us, t' keep Lord Urthblood from gettin' this ship! We saw it comin' but didn't realize 'til th' very last that it was goin' too fast to stop or turn! So Rosbor ordered us t' come find you. Hope it ain't too late!"

"Naw, you did good, Shoggs! Lucky fer us there's hatches and stairs all up 'n' down th' length o' this ship that'll lead us topside again. You take th' rest o' the lads 'n' lasses back th' way you came an' show 'em to safety. I'll be along right after I see t' something ... " He started to turn away, but Tulia caught him by the elbow.

"Cap'n where d' you think yore goin'?"

"In case you'd fergotten, Tully, we left a few otters back there guardin' th' oarsrats. What kinda commander would I be if I didn't go back for 'em? Won't take more'n two shakes o' me rudder ... "

"It'd better not." Tulia grinned without much humor. "'Cos we ain't takin' a single step without you. Sir."

One look into the resolute faces of his fellow otters was all Saybrook needed to see that they would not budge on this matter, orders or no. "Okay. Wait here, an' I'll be right back ... "

Saybrook had to push his way past panicking searats who were now more afraid of drowning than they were of Urthblood's otters. He didn't raise a paw to stop them from fleeing to the imagined safety of the top deck, as long as they didn't try to waylay him.

By the time Saybrook reached the forward end of the galley, the floor beneath him was already tilting noticeably to starboard, and seawater sloshed around his ankles. The two otters he'd assigned to guard this end met him at the door; they'd just been getting ready to abandon their post. Saybrook glanced past them to see that roiling waters already covered half the bound searat rowers' heads, while the rest screamed, struggled and gnawed at their restraining ropes in desperation. This part of the _Whiteclaw_ had taken the full brunt of the collision; nearly the entire starboard side of the long galley was caved in and open to the sea, the water rushing through the ragged hole in a torrent. All the decks below them must have already been flooded, as this one soon would be as well.

Saybrook scanned the far end of the galley, where the inrushing seawater was already above waist level. There was no sign of the otter pair he'd stationed there, and he questioned the other two as to the missing duo's whereabouts.

"Exlin an' Taunia tried t' swim out through that hole in th' hull when th' water started gettin' too high fer their likin'," came the shouted reply over the anguished cries of the drowning searats. "Don't know if they made it out okay, sir."

Saybrook nodded, taking stock of the scene of panic and destruction displayed before him; the sunlight coming in through the massive hull breach provided plenty of illumination for that. As he watched, the heads of two more rats went under the seething, churning waters pouring into the galley. This ship was sinking, fast.

Saybrook turned to the other two otters, who were clearly champing at the bit to be gone. "We should try to free them. The ones who're still alive, at any rate ... "

"It's too late fer that, Cap'n sir! If we don't get outta here now, we'll be trapped an' drown too!"

"But we're th' ones who tied 'em to their oars in th' first place!"

"Can't be helped, sir. Fortunes o' war. It's them or us now!"

Saybrook ground his teeth. He never imagined that he was condemning these rats to death when he'd ordered them tied to their oars ... but then, how could any rational beast have anticipated that Tratton would resort to something like this? Saybrook was no murderer, but he certainly felt like one now.

"Damn!" he spat, then addressed his two comrades. "Okay, let's get goin'! The rest o' th' crew's waitin' on us, an' we don't wanna all get stuck down here, so let's move those rudders!" With one last forlorn and frustrated glance over his shoulder at the trapped and drowning oarsrats, Saybrook joined his companions in bustling up the companionways to rejoin their waiting squad.

They made the rendezvous without any problem, since nearly every rat who was awake and unrestrained had fled past this point by now. When the reunited otter force moved on to make their own way topside, however, they encountered more than one passageway clogged with panic-stricken searats clawing and pulling at each other to be the first out. It was here that the otters' superior strength and size came in handy; using full body checks and expert swats of their heavy tails, Saybrook's platoon bulled their way through the frenzied throngs, sending any rat in their path flying or smashing them to the deck and jumping over them.

Trouble came with the final set of stairs up to the top deck. Several dozen rat fighters who'd revived before the otters had had a chance to disarm them were congregated there, and they were not about to step aside for Saybrook's squad without a fight. One of the otters went down and Tulia suffered a deep gash in her side before Saybrook pulled them back.

"This's no good! There's too many of th' scurvy seabeasts packed too tightly t'gether, an' they've all got blades!"

"Not t' worry, Cap'n!" Shogger shouted over the melee. "There's other ways up farther for'ard! Kortzo took one down - I saw 'im!"

"Then what're we waitin' fer? Lead th' way, Shoggs!"

Two of the uninjured otters grabbed up their fallen compatriot - they weren't about to leave any of their slain behind if they could help it - and hurried forward with the others. Even this far forward and this high up, the water covered their footpaws, splashing with every step. The sound of the decks behind and below them flooding was a constant low roar, the _Whiteclaw_'s death moan, growing loud enough now that it could be heard above the distant shouting rats and the tortured creaks and groans from the hull and bulwarks all around them. They needed to find an unobstructed stairway topside, and soon.

What they found first was Kortzo, lying lifelessly in the ankle-deep water with three slain searats around him. The tragic tableau told the story quite clearly: the young scrapper, coming in from the front where Saybrook's group hadn't been yet, must have encountered a number of the revived searats who still had their weapons. Perhaps he'd been taken by surprise, or perhaps he'd been too headstrong to retreat. If he'd run into the rats before the collision had occurred, then those foebeasts would have given him the full measure of their malicious attention, no matter what warning he'd been carrying. However the details had played out, Kortzo had paid with his life.

"Real shame, that," Saybrook lamented. "I allers liked that 'un - had some real spirit in 'im."

"At least he took a few of 'em with him," said Tulia, clutching at her wounded side as she leaned on another otter for support.

"Aye," Saybrook nodded. "An' at least this tells us we're headed th' right way too. Now let's see if we can't find th' way Kort came down ... "

Two more of the big male otters put up their weapons so they could carry Kortzo between them. It turned out he had not fallen far at all from the companionway he'd used to descend belowdecks, and soon Saybrook's squad was on its way up and out into the sun once more.

The scene that greeted them there was one of total and complete pandemonium. Every rat who could had made its way up here, and they now crowded the deck in their confused masses, many of them standing, unknowing or uncaring, atop their slain shipmates. Of course, now that they were here, where else could they go? A climb up into the highest riggings would only postpone their drowning by a few moments, and the available landing boats could only hope to hold about half the rats present. Needless to say, it was around those smaller auxiliary craft that most of the rats were clustered, and where more than one vicious fight had broken out to determine who would earn passage on the lifeboats and who would be left behind to die.

This was not an issue for the otters, who lined themselves along the port rail as far from the lethally squabbling searats as they could. It would have been convenient to have at least a small rowboat to bear their two fallen brethren back to shore, but they would have to make do without it. It would be awkward swimming corpses to dry land, but it could be done, especially with so many willing paws to take turns with the duty.

The sight of the selfish searats rioting amongst themselves in the midst of their vitriol-scarred kin's bodies was only one surreal aspect of the situation. Another was how low the _Whiteclaw_ rode in the water. To Saybrook's eye, it was almost like he'd come up on the deck of a different ship. Before the collision, the dreadnought had stood proud and intimidating above the sea around her, but now her expansive deck was almost level with the undulating wavetops. When it came time to depart, they would not have to dive off the side so much as just slip into the water from her, as if sliding off a vast raft.

And that time was nigh. Even as the otters stood along the port railings making their final preparations for departure, the lapping waves began to wash over the starboard side above where the _Wedge_ had holed the _Whiteclaw_. That sinister ironclad was visible, now riding as high in the water as the larger warship's swamped deck, slowly backing away from the destruction it had wrought. Clearly the occupants of that small steel destroyer wanted nothing to do with cleaning up the mess they'd caused, and Saybrook suspected that any castaways who sought refuge aboard that cramped vessel would be ordered slain by Tratton himself.

A shiny dark head popped up above the waveswells, breaking the surface right where the otter platoon was about to dive into the sea. "Hey, there you all are!" Rosbor grinned up at them. "I was beginnin' to think I was the only riverdog who'd made it off that wreck alive! How're we doin'?"

"Kortzo and Smolar were slain, an' Tulia's hurt pretty bad," Saybrook replied. "Fortunately, these seavermin seem more intent on murderin' each other fer seats in their lifeboats than causin' us further bother."

"That figgers." Rosbor blew water off his snout. "Barbarians!"

"Don't s'pose ye've seen Exlin or Taunia anywhere about, Rossy? They were guardin' th' rowin' galley amidships, an' tried t' make it out the breach in th' hull."

Rosbor shook his head. "I been circlin' this whole ship from stem to stern ever since I got out m'self, an' ain't seen whisker ner rudder o' them two. Reckon they coulda started right out fer th' shore an' got past me somehow, but wouldn't be like any otter I know t' leave behind mateys who might need a paw ... "

"True," Saybrook sadly agreed. "Any sign of any of them liddle steel murder machines floatin' about down there?"

"Other than th' one that rammed us, no, sir."

"Good. Then you, me 'n' Shoggs'll take one last swim 'round starboard t' see if we can't find Exlin an' Taunia. If they still haven't shown up by then, we gotta consider 'em lost." Saybrook glanced back behind him; the entire starboard half of the main deck was now awash in seawater ranging from ankle- to knee-deep on the rats. Soon the entire top deck would be submerged. "Okay, every otter, into th' water an' head fer shore! Stick together, an' watch out fer those tubby butcherin' marauder boats! Spell each other carryin' Kortzo an' Smolar so's ye don't get too tired, an' help Tulia along too! Take it slow an' safe - we may've lost four otters on this trip, an' I don't wanna lose any more if'n I can help it. Us three'll catch up soon as we can. Awright, move out!"

With desperate searats climbing the riggings to buy themselves an extra minute or two of life, Saugus and Klystra were forced to join all the gulls in taking flight, circling above the sinking ship as aerial guardians of the _Whiteclaw_'s last moments. Below them they could see the main group of otters making for land, Saybrook and his two companion scouts setting off on their futile search for the pair of missing otters who would never be found, two large landing boats and several smaller rowboats overloaded with searats trying to distance themselves from the drowning dreadnought, and the arrowhead-shaped outline of the _Wedge_ moving out to open sea as fast as her propeller screws and rat rowers could take her.

Thus ended the final skirmish in Tratton's doomed bid to capture Salamandastron for his own.

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Midday saw the coastal waters off Salamandastron nearly free of searat vessels. The tallest masts of the _Whiteclaw_ had at last disappeared beneath the sun-mirrored waves, leaving the unfortunate crewrats clinging to them to sink or swim on their own. Some kept themselves afloat long enough to paddle over to one of the landing boats or dinghies, only to get brained by oars for their trouble. By the same token, when one of the landing boats made for the _Wedge_, Tratton's personal archers climbed up on the deck of the ironclad and opened fire, slaying half a dozen of the refuge-seekers before they got the message to turn their craft around or else all would meet that same fate. With nowhere else to go, the rowers of the landing boat forlornly struck out for shore. Before long there was an entire ragged flotilla struggling landward. A few of the more compassionate rats threw out lines to the drifting survivors of the _Whaleslayer_, _Stormbringer_ and _Thunderchild_, resulting in the overcrowded landing boats and dinghies towing additional castaways behind them.

Tratton stood atop the _Wedge_ far out to sea, surveying the now-tranquil scene of his catastrophe. Salamandastron loomed over all in the distance like a mighty giant, the implacable guardian of the coastlands that had frustrated this latest and grandest attempt to conquer it, just as it had resisted all previous conquests. It struck the Searat King now that the squat, truncated mountain, when viewed at the correct angle and distance, actually resembled a vast disembodied badger's head. He knew in a stroke of enlightenment that he had challenged the invisible forces of fate this day. Perhaps it had been inevitable that he would fail here.

The question facing him now was, would this be the end of everything for him? Could he even depend on the crew of the _Wedge_ to get him back to Terramort alive, or would they turn against him before they reached his island stronghold? For that matter, how safe would that sanctuary itself be once he reached it? There were sure to be open challenges now. No ruler could suffer the kind of massive defeat he'd experienced today and not face threats from within his own ranks. For many seasons now he'd been forging the totality of searat power into a maritime empire eclipsing all that had come before it, and he had achieved this grand success not only through tactical victories over the woodlanders, not only through innovation and invention, not only through shrewdly rewarding competence and loyalty, but more than anything else through terror and unpredictability. Searats were by their very nature an unruly and cutthroat species and culture, and would not accept any leadership less ruthless and brutal than they were. Tratton was an expert weaponsmaster, capable of handling any individual challenger in single combat. As for conspiracies against his throne, he had his spies, and spies for the spies, and informants who didn't even know that's what they were. Nothing happened on Terramort or any of his other islands or mainland encampments or any of his warships or galleons under his flag that he didn't know about. Tratton had eyes and ears everywhere, and officers who were even contemplating treachery could never know when the Searat King's secret police would appear in their private chambers or aboard their ships in the dead of night to lead them away, never to be seen again. It had happened more than once, and there was a saying among searats nowadays that Tratton knew when you were about to turn traitor before you even did yourself. It was, in its own twisted way, not too dissimilar to the awe in which Urthblood's followers held that Badger Lord's prophetic powers, and more than one searat must have wondered from time to time whether their own ruler possessed comparable visionary sight. Tratton was only too happy to let them wonder.

Would that meticulously cultivated aura of terror hold in the face of a loss of this magnitude? At the start of winter, Tratton's fleet had had eight dreadnoughts. Now six of those lay at the bottom of the sea, along with their loyal captains, with only one new dreadnought currently under construction in the shipyards of Terramort. What was even worse, the attack on the timber mill which had ignited these current hostilities had robbed him of his primary source of lumber for building new ships. Tratton knew his invincible navy had been proven to be anything but, and he was now revealed, not only to his woodlander foes but also to his own kind, to be horribly vulnerable to Urthblood's unanticipated new ways of waging war. And when sharks smelled blood in the water ...

Grong, the pilot of the _Wedge_ now that Tanzillo was dead, hesitantly climbed up out of the top hatch and approached Tratton, mindful to stop while he was still out of immediate sabre range. "Yer Majesty, you want we should start back to Terramort?"

"Hold our position for now," Tratton said in a voice almost devoid of emotion. "Some of the defender pods may have survived those explosions. We will give them until sundown to rendezvous with us, if Urthblood doesn't chase us away first. We can tow them to Terramort. They are too valuable to lose, and ill-equipped for sailing the open seas. I would prefer not to let them fall into Urthblood's claws if I can help it."

"Very good, M'Lord. Oh, an' Chef said t' inform you that he'll have a lunch ready fer you whenever, um, you want it. Sire."

"Thank you, Grong. That will be all."

The pilot rat swallowed in relief and ducked belowdecks again, leaving Tratton alone once more to gaze in solitude at the prize which had been denied him. At that moment, he suspected it might be midsummer before his meals would lose their sour taste in his mouth.

00000000000

Saybrook's squad, even slowed by the injured Tulia and the bodies of Kortzo and Smolar, still made it ashore ahead of any of the stranded searats. Partly this was due to the otters' natural swimming ability, but there was also the matter of the reception Lord Urthblood plainly planned to give any of the seavermin unwise enough to try landing right in front of Salamandastron.

The otters emerged from the surf to be greeted by ranks of Gawtrybe archers stretched in a defensive shooting line between the mountain and the sea. Urthblood was there too, giving Matowick his orders.

"Looks like around two hundred of the seascum survived, M' Lord," the squirrel captain observed as he strung his bow. "Give or take ... "

"If they attempt a landfall anywhere near the mountain, slay the first twoscore who set foot on shore. Accept the surrender of any who will give it after that. Those who insist on fighting, show them to Dark Forest." Urthblood turned to take Saybrook's report. "How did it go, Captain?"

"Four beasts lost, plus Tully's hurt pretty bad. High price t' pay fer a ship that ended up on th' seabed anyway ... "

"So I saw. Saugus and Klystra have already reported back. I should have guessed Tratton would deny me his ship and its secrets if there was any way at all for him to do so. I am sure you did your best, Captain. You could not have been expected to anticipate such a desperate move on Tratton's part."

"Aye, that's true 'nuff. My Lord, Tratton still had so many of his rats aboard the _Whiteclaw_. He must've known a lot of 'em was still alive, an' would be killed or trapped when he rammed us. How could anybeast do such a thing?"

"Because to a mind like Tratton's, all creatures are merely assets, to be used or disposed of for his own aims as he sees fit. I have told you many times that he will no sooner hesitate to sacrifice his own rats than he would in slaying his enemies. Today you have seen this borne out yourself. You are not to blame for any of those rats who died out there, Captain. It was my decision to try to capture that dreadnought ... and it was Tratton's decision to take the action he did in order to frustrate me in this goal. This is war. Creatures die, as much as we may wish it to be otherwise."

Saybrook opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. He wanted to confess to Urthblood about the searats he'd left tied to their oar handles, restrained at his order and then abandoned to die in the flooding galley while he and his otters saved their own necks. He wanted to tell the badger all about it, but the words wouldn't come. Looking at the line of eager and armed Gawtrybe, he realized that even if those rat rowers had been able to escape, many of them probably would have drowned anyway, or been murdered at the claws of their fellow rats to deny them from claiming seats on the lifeboats, or face death now from the grimly determined squirrel archers. But none of that could dispel the nagging suspicion gnawing at the back of his mind that he would be haunted for the rest of his seasons by the memory of those anguished, pleading faces and those terrified, desperate cries.

"Aye, that's true, I reckon," Saybrook said at last, reminding himself that at least two of his friends and comrades had been slain by searat blades this day ... and that wasn't taking into account the casualties suffered during the bombardment of Salamandastron itself. "What's our tally lookin' like up in there, M' Lord?"

"About a score dead, including the catapult crews. I should not have sent them out during that attack - I realize now there is nothing they could have hoped to achieve, aside from a futile show of resistance. Still, we were lucky overall. Our losses could have been far greater, considering the ferocity of Tratton's assault."

"I s'pose. If it wasn't fer them gulls, I guess they'd still be pummellin' us now."

"Get Tulia right into the infirmary to have her wounds tended. I will arrange a burial and memorial service for your slain otters, along with the rest of our war dead ... once we have taken care of these remaining rats."

While several of Saybrook's squad bore Tulia and the two bodies into the mountain, the otter captain and most of his team remained out on the beach with Urthblood and the squirrels. Saybrook squinted seaward, in the general direction of the unseen Wedge. "You gonna go after that steel ramship out there you suspect Tratton's on, an' mebbe end this whole thing once an' fer all?"

The oversized striped head did a slow side-to-side shake. "The flaming oil would not be effective against a steel vessel such as that, and we depleted our supply of the vitriol in the assault on that last dreadnought. No, we will allow Tratton to slink back to Terramort to lick his wounds, and see in time whether he survives the blow we have dealt him this day. His fellow searats may no longer be content to accept the rule of one who has suffered so great a defeat."

"And if he survives, and remains king?" Matowick queried, clearly not pleased by the prospect; he, like Saybrook, would have liked to have Tratton taken out of the picture for good.

"Then we may find him knocking at our gate again someday," Urthblood said. "If he returns with further warfare in mind, I will treat him no less harshly than I did today, and he would likely not emerge from that contest alive. If, on the other paw, he comes to Salamandastron under a flag of truce ... well, then we will see what we will see."

Matowick couldn't suppress his scowl. "M' Lord! After all this, you'd still enter into negotiations with that treacherous tyrant?"

"Position of power, Captain, remember? I now have it ... and Tratton does not."


	10. Chapter 61

Chapter Sixty-One

When Tolomeo clawed his way up out of his delirium, he found his mentor sitting at his bedside.

This being his first return to full consciousness in over a day, Tolomeo spent several moments taking stock of himself and his surroundings. "So, it wasn't a nightmare after all," the mouse murmured, staring down at the outlines of his foreshortened legs beneath the bedcovers.

"No, I'm afraid not," the marten glassblower consoled his apprentice with a paw upon Tolomeo's shoulder. "But the worst is over. You gave us a tense night and morning, though. You went into shock, and understandably so. But Lord Urthblood's healers Brotjer and Esquilin knew just what treatment to administer to ease the strains on your body's system. It's thanks to them that you're still alive, and likely to stay that way now."

"Guess that makes me lucky, then ... "

Trelayne gave his mouse assistant a commiserating pat. "I know you must not feel that way now, but you've just suffered an injury that would be a blow to anybeast's spirit. Give it time ... "

Tolomeo sighed. "I'm not blaming you, Trelayne. Accidents happen. When we started working with so much of the glass vitriol, I knew it would be a dangerous business. I always wondered whether part or even all of me might end up getting burned away by that wicked stuff. At least it wasn't you. Lord Urthblood can get along without me, but he'd be lost without you."

"Don't sell yourself short. We were a team - you, me and Kyslith were a team, and now that team's a member short. It won't be easy getting along without you. Fortunately, we'll have time to get things sorted out, now that the hostilities are over."

Tolomeo's eyes went wide with surprise. "How long was I out?"

"Just about a full day. It's around midnight now, of the night after your injury."

"What about the battle? We ... won? Already?"

"Did we ever!" the marten beamed. "Our victory may have come at a high cost, but it must have been the rout of all routs in the long history of strife between the searats and the Badger Lords of Salamandastron! All four dreadnoughts were destroyed, thanks to the weapons you've been helping me prepare since last season. Only about two hundred rats survived the sinking of those warships, and when they tried to put ashore in front of the mountain, Captain Matowick's lads and lasses sent a few hails of arrows their way to let 'em know they weren't welcome here. They got the message pretty quick, and turned their escape boats northward. Lord Urthblood let 'em go, though he sent out his owl Saugus and a score of the Gawtrybe to shadow them along the coast. He's content to leave them in peace, although if they do come ashore north of here and cause any trouble or bother any goodbeasts, those squirrels have orders to shoot to kill. And then there are the gulls. Now that they've seen how effectively they can fight against the searats, you can bet they'll be tempted to harass those fleeing seavermin all the way out to sea and halfway back to Terramort. Those villains' days of terrorizing the coastlands as they please may well be over after today."

"Well, that's ... good. But like you said, our victory came at a heavy cost ... tho', I must say, it's not as crowded as I'd expect it to be down here after a battle of that scale." Tolomeo's gaze went to the weasel in the bed alongside his. "What's his story?" he asked Trelayne.

"Monda's the only one of our catapult gunners to survive. All the rest were killed, and their catapults destroyed."

"Oh." Tolomeo looked past Monda to the bed beyond, where Tulia lay slumbering deeply, her side heavily bandaged. "And her?"

"Got injured trying to capture the last dreadnought intact for Lord Urthblood, but Tratton sank it himself rather than let us keep it. It was rather touch and go with her for awhile too, but it looks like she's out of the woods now. Four of her fellow otters weren't so lucky."

"Oh," Tolomeo said again, then glanced across the aisle to where several of the beds had been pushed aside to clear a mattress-covered area on the floor for the lamed eagle Altidor to sprawl. "What about him?"

"Took arrows in the wing and leg during a low flyover of one of the searat ships. Klystra and Saugus emerged from the battle relatively unscathed, but several of the seagulls were slain in the attempt to capture the last dreadnought."

"Well, that's between Lord Urthblood and King Grullon, I suppose ... although that ill-mannered gull probably wouldn't care if a hundred of his kin got killed, as long as we keep feeding him." Down the row from Altidor lay a couple of Gawtrybe sporting a variety of splints and dressings. "What happened to them?"

"Depends. Three Gawtrybe were killed and several more injured when one of Tratton's explosive charges hit the main gates. But there were also a number of tunnel collapses and outer wall breaches around on the seaward slopes, and the squirrels got the worst of that too, since it was mainly them Urthblood had guarding all the window slots. There may still be some dead and injured who have yet to be pulled out from under the rubble. But, of the three hundred or so defenders Salamandastron had at the start of this battle, it appears the vast majority weathered this storm with little or no ill effects."

"Doesn't seem like it, from the rundown you just gave me. Guess I am lucky, compared to how I could have ended up. Was there any group in Salamandastron at all that didn't suffer losses?"

Trelayne thought a moment. "I don't believe Captain Tillamook's hedgehogs took any casualties." Then the marten added with a sad smile, "And, if it makes you feel any better, I think you're the only mouse casualty in the entire mountain." A single tear dampened Trelayne's cheek fur. "Tolomeo, I am so sorry. You're not even a soldierbeast. You shouldn't have been in the middle of this ... and you wouldn't have been, if I hadn't dragged you down here from the Northlands ... "

Now it was the crippled mouse's turn to bestow a comforting pat on his master's paw. "It's not your fault, sir. I'm your assistant, remember? Part of your team. It was a battle, and battles can claim combatants and noncombatants alike. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But you said yourself that the weapons I helped you make this past season were what won the battle for us today. Sure, I'd like to have my legs back, but if I helped rid the coastlands of Tratton forever, maybe that's almost a fair trade, eh?"

"There's some brave spirit! As for Tratton being gone for good, that remains to be seen. That armored boat that was holding position far offshore sailed away just before sundown, towing a couple of those tiny steel undersea vessels after it. Lord Urthblood seemed to think Tratton was aboard it, so that searat may very well still be at large. But with so much of his navy now destroyed ... " Trelayne shrugged. "Only time will tell whether we are truly rid of him. But after today, I think he would be mad to try to take on Lord Urthblood again."

"I just hope he crawls back to Terramort with his tail between his legs and stays there, and never defiles our shores again." Tolomeo snuggled down farther below the covers. "Could you please do me a favor, and put a blanket from one of the empty beds across the bottom of mine? My feet are cold."

"Your .. feet?"

"I know it sounds silly, but I can still feel them. I swear I can. And they're cold."

"Of course." Trelayne did as he'd been asked, then gave Tolomeo a parting shoulder pat. "I'm going to get some sleep while there's still some night left. Hold steady, my friend, and I'll see you again in the morning."

00000000000

No official ceremony was held for the replacement of Machus's crystal statue.

Urthblood was wise to have moved the heavy yet fragile glass sculpture inside the fortress, for the mountainside where it normally stood now bore several shallow craters and pulverized boulders to mark the impact sites of Tratton's blast kegs. Trelayne's memorial to the fallen swordfox almost surely would have been destroyed by those near-misses.

The grave itself lay undisturbed, the pedestal above it intact except for a few minor chips and pits from the nearby explosions. The Badger Lord had several of his handybeasts test the integrity and stability of that simple stone platform. Then, satisfied it was still fit to support the statue for which it had been designed, Urthblood had the giant crystal figurine carried back out of the dining hall and down the stairs, out the main and now gateless seaward entrance and back up the south slopes to its former position.

Urthblood and Trelayne were on paw to oversee the re-erecting of the statue in its proper place. Several of the badger warrior's captains turned out for the occasion as well. Matowick and Lieutenant Perricone stood closely side-by-side among a gathering that also included Mattoon, Saybrook and Tillamook.

It was nearly noon of the day following the Searat King's defeat. The assembled creatures were glad for the strong sunshine to offset the cool and constant breeze blowing off the ocean. A faint odor of saltpeter and brimstone hung on the air around Salamandastron, the lingering residue of Tratton's assault that left a stinging, flinty itch in the nostrils. As the steadying pullropes were taken down from the newly-uprighted statue, the sun directly overhead seemed to spear its way into the likeness of Machus and infuse it with the glow of life. Once again Trelayne's artistic masterpiece stood displayed where it was meant to be, the genius of his glass-shaping talent lending all its brilliance to the commemoration of the swordfox's final resting place at the spot where he fell defending his Lord.

And then it was over, this ceremony that wasn't a ceremony in which the only speeches made were the mutters and grunts of the workerbeasts expending their musclepower for the repositioning of the statue. Yet as the hauling ropes were recoiled and borne back down the mountainside atop the carrying pallet, the witness officers stood rooted to their spots, gazing at the splendid memorial standing tall and proud before them. Its restoration to Machus's grave carried a symbolism that nobeast present could ignore.

"Guess it really is over," Saybrook said, giving voice to what all were thinking. "Lord Urthblood wouldn'ta gone to all th' trouble o' havin' that glass fox brought out here again if he s'pected Tratton would be back anytime soon. Looks like we won't be seein' that rat again this season, if ever."

"Let's hope it's never!" snorted Tillamook.

"Aye t' that, mate," seconded Mattoon.

Urthblood addressed his captains. "Let us retire inside for lunch. We will hold the burial and memorial services for your slain comrades around on the east slopes after the midday meal. Captain Matowick, Lieutenant Perricone, stay a moment, please."

While the other captains returned indoors, Matowick and his lieutenant approached the Badger Lord to receive what they were sure would be orders for some task or other. They were in for a most pleasant surprise.

"Yes, My Lord?" Matowick asked expectantly.

"Captain, is it still the desire of you and the Lieutenant here to be wed?"

"Wh-why yes, Lord! Very much so!"

"Most definitely, Lord!" Perri agreed without hesitation.

"Very well. Name the date, and I will arrange the marriage festivities accordingly. Once we have these solemn observances of pain and loss behind us, it will be a welcome change to have a more positive and life-affirming ceremony to which we can all look forward. I will declare it a day of celebration for all of Salamandastron, whenever you decide is best for you."

"Thank you, Lord!" the two squirrels stammered on top of each other.

Urthblood turned and strode toward the tunnel entrance, leaving Matowick and Perricone standing alone on the south slopes. The two Gawtrybe gazed deeply into each other's eyes, breathless as idiot smiles played across their faces. As one, they turned their heads to behold once more the sparkling crystal visage of Machus, which seemed now to almost be winking at them in the noon sun. It had to be their imaginations. Didn't it?

But Urthblood's consent for their wedding drove home to them the reality of the situation even more than the return of this statue out here on the open and exposed mountainside. Things were getting back to normal at Salamandastron ... and then some.

"Saybrook was right, wasn't he?" Perri murmured. "It really is over, isn't it?"

"Aye." Matowick put his paw around his fiance's shoulders. For the first time in a long time, he didn't even notice the ever-present ringing in his ears. "It is. Now let's get inside. We've got some wedding plans to make!"

00000000000

The next morning saw Urthblood up on the plateau before sunrise, seeing off Captain Klystra. The dead had been buried and eulogized, the searats chased away from the environs of Salamandastron, and the wedding date set for his two senior Gawtrybe officers. Now it was time for the Badger Lord to turn his attention inland once more and focus upon his concerns in Mossflower, far from the coastlands.

"Captain," Urthblood addressed the falcon perched on the crater rim before him, "you came to me before this latest battle bearing a request from Captain Tardo at Doublegate asking permission for the inventor bankvole Lorr to dwell there. Please inform Tardo that I would insist upon it, and that I would like to engage Lorr on a special project concerning the underwater searat craft. He is to be granted unrestricted access to that vessel, and you are to show him these ... " The badger tucked a rolled-up parchment into the scroll message tube configured into the breast of Klystra's heavy jerkin. "Once you have completed your errands, return to Salamandastron with Lorr's answer. If he is not willing to place himself in my service, I must know it immediately so that I may assign somebeast else to this task as soon as possible."

"Yes, Lord!" the falcon acknowledged.

"I also want you to fly to Foxguard to receive Andrus's status report," Urthblood continued. "He seemed to think there might be some trouble between him and the Redwallers over the scale of that garrison and observation post, and I am hoping to avoid that. Mostly, however, I am simply interested in how far along Andrus is with construction. If he has anything of great depth or detail to report, have him write it up and send it along with you as a dispatch."

Klystra nodded his understanding. "That all?"

"Also, fly over the Western Plains to make sure Daum and those slaves have crested the mountains all right and are on their way to Redwall in good stead. They know to steer clear of the lair of the Flitch-aye-aye, but we must make sure they encounter no other trouble either. This is snake and toad season, and the warmer weather will also have other vermin and evil-minded creatures out and about. You may wish to stop by Redwall to let the Abbess know more refugees are on their way - I am sure they will reward you for this courtesy with a fine meal, at the very least. I have not dispatched a messenger to Redwall since winter's end, and the only news I have had from there recently was what little you heard from the Guosim when they came by Doublegate."

"As you command, Lord."

"Go now. Keep your eyes and ears sharp, and observe all that is to be seen upon the lands below you. Carry out your assignment with the best speed you can manage, and return as soon as you are able. It will be some days before Commodore Altidor is able to fly again, and I would not be without your service any longer than I must."

"Yes. Will return soon as can, Lord." Klystra spread his wings and flapped away into the rising sun, soaring high to clear the mountains to the east.

Urthblood turned to the center of the plateau, where the giant mirror assembly sat once more, now that the searat threat had been repulsed from these shores. He'd instructed the crew staffing the device what was expected of them. Now he stood aside as the morning's first rays cleared the distant peaks and struck the reflective surface in a blinding glare. The beasts controlling the instrument swiveled the mirror slowly back and forth in its cradle, sending bright shimmers toward the mountaintops. Their orders were to do this from sunrise to noon on every day that the sun shone, until they were told otherwise. They'd not been informed of the reason for this odd task.

Urthblood watched them for a short while to satisfy himself that the job was being carried out adequately, then descended into the mountain. The mirror staff sighed and kept at their work, reflecting the sunlight back toward Mossflower at a height where only birds in flight would possibly be able to see it.


End file.
